I’ve been trying to quit Tae Kwon Do for about a month now.
I signed up for Tae Kwon Do back in December. I was taking with my kids and it was fun… ish, but then it turned out that even though I was in a class with my kids we were learning different things. They needed one skill set to get their yellow belts and I needed another, adult, skill set that involved blocks and things I don’t understand. So I would be separated from my kids in class if there were two or more instructors.
If there was only one instructor that day I would just do whatever the little kids did.
Just as I was becoming more and more frustrated it was time to test.
I was not ready for my yellow belt testing. The kids were all set. They could count to 10 in Korean, they knew the focuses and they knew the pattern/yelly thing that probably has a name that I don’t know and they were prepared to break some boards.
I just wanted to use that 30 minutes to walk over to Trader Joe’s to get something to make for dinner.
I kind of stopped going, but the master shamed me into coming back.
But it gets better – or worse. It costs $50 per person to test for a belt.
$50 x 3 = $150
Each person needs their own sparring gear once one advances to the yellow belt. Each set of sparring gear costs $190.
$190 x 3 = $570
Here comes the math joke.
$150 + $570 > Sarah is willing to spend to make an ass out of herself in front of people.
I don’t mind spending a lot of money for something my children enjoy. Hell, I don’t mind spending disgusting amounts of money on things that I enjoy. I figured I was not getting $240 worth of enjoyment out of Tae Kwon Do and so I should quit and spend that money on a nice gym membership.
So I tried to quit again.
Again, the master shamed me. Do it for the children!
Fine.
But I went home and thought about it. How is he going to argue with me if I don’t have the money, because really, isn’t that why he wants me there in the first place?
After The Goon Squad earned their yellow belts I took my children to the little kid class. The ones adults aren’t supposed to go to. I am very tricky.
The master asked me why I wasn’t coming to class.
I told him it was too much money to buy all of the equipment for sparring and that I didn’t know my blocks and I just wasn’t feeling it.
HE TRICKED ME AGAIN!
He told me that I didn’t have to test and I didn’t have to buy all of the equipment and that money should not be the thing stopping me from setting a good example for my children. He said if it came down to it and I really couldn’t afford it I could help out by answering phones there in the studio.
He was so nice! He was so reasonable! I don’t have to give him any money!
The problem is that I really, really just don’t want to do it. It isn’t that I am lazy. I have been out walking almost every day and I do my elliptical at least five times a week. I just don’t want to do this.
I was driving my five year old twins and my nine year old neighbor to Tae Kwon Do today. They were talking about “Jackmania” which is the imaginary kingdom of next door so I was pretty much ignoring them when the conversation took a turn that made my ears perk up.
“Hey Ian!” said the older boy. “You know how squirrels eat nuts?”
Because I think like a nine year old boy I could see where this was going a mile away.
He continued “Ahhh! Squirrels are after my nuts! They are in my pants!”
Ian laughed, but he was clueless and the older kid knew it.
“Get it? Because I have nuts in my pants!”
Ian asked “Why do you have nuts in your pants?”
“Because your nut is your penis!” neighbor boy replied.
I had a conundrum. Your nuts are not your penis and I know this. I don’t want my kids to go around with bad information or making jokes that don’t make sense. On the other hand, I don’t really want to talk about scrotums with a random 3rd grader. I am friends with his parents, but I don’t really talk to them about testicles that often so I don’t know how they would feel about me giving their children lessons about anatomy and slang.
I am not a patient woman, but I bode my time. I was a relatively mature adult and I waited until we got home and I was alone with my children.
“Listen guys,” I said “Remember when Jack said that your nut was your penis? That isn’t exactly true.”
I said penis. I had their attention.
“Your nuts are really your scrotum,”
*blank looks*
“your testicles”
*blank looks*
“the thing under your penis. You know what I am talking about?”
Claudia said yes and walked away.
Ian said “Under my penis?”
I was always under the impression that boys were obsessed with their balls, but here is my son, almost six years old and he forgot that there was something under his penis.
I said “Yeah, the thing under your penis.”
Then I actually said “Put your hand in your pants and feel under your penis.”
He figured it out. I am an excellent mother.
So far there has been no further discussion of the nuts, but I have a feeling that this is nowhere near over.
With three minutes to go in the third period of the Olympic gold medal men’s hockey game between Canada and the U.S.A. yesterday my doorbell rang.
The game was 2 – 1 Canada at the time and it was so exciting that my husband and I were actually both standing in front of the television.
When the door bell rang we just looked at each other and said pretty much in unison “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
Who is soliciting door to door during the U.S.A./Canada hockey game?
I almost didn’t answer it, but we have a DVR so we paused the game and I went downstairs.
Through our sidelights I saw that it was Leanna, my seven-year-old neighbor. I stopped being angry right away because: 1) I like her. She’s pretty cute and what does a seven-year-old know about Olympic hockey?, 2) She was wearing a sombrero. It is really hard to be mad at somebody wearing a sombrero. and 3) She was holding a bag that was probably for me.
I opened the door and the bag WAS for me.
The bag contained four boxes of Girl Scout Cookies. Two boxes of Somoas and two boxes of Thin Mints.
I don’t know how closely you are following my life, but I am currently involved in two weight losscompetitions, really three if you count the side bet that I made with my dad yesterday.
It was as if he was in cahoots with Leanna.
But my father scheming against me with neighborhood children isn’t my point. My point is that every year, just as I am figuring out how to diet and exercise properly a cute little girl comes to my door with cookies, delicious Girl Scout Cookies, and tries to sabotage my diet.
I’d like to propose that the girl scouts move their cookie deliveries to the fall when I tend to be on a Halloween to New Years Eve food bender anyway.
I’d also like to propose that anyone who rings my doorbell during an important sporting event wear a sombrero to lessen my wrath.
This morning my five year old son told me that he needed to take his lunch to school in a shopping bag instead of the $30 Bakugan lunch thing I bought for him because that is what all of the “cool kids” were doing.
Then he said that he knew he was a cool kid because he had a stuffed dragon.
I kind of wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t worry about the cool kids. The kids that are cool in high school usually have pretty mediocre lives by their mid 20s and nobody even remembers who the cool kids were in their Kindergarten class.
I wanted to tell him to be himself and to have fun. I wanted to tell him that if it made him happy to take his lunch in a hat then that is what he should do.
I wanted to tell him that the cool kids don’t matter.
Of course, I still care about the cool kids. Yes, I care about them much less than I did when I was in 8th grade, but a tiny little part of me will always want to part of the “in” crowd. I know it doesn’t matter. I know I am happy. I know my life is good and I have great friends, but this girl is still in there somewhere wanting to be friends with the most popular girl in school.
Now I’m just hoping that the cool kids have decided against bras to the grocery store because I accidentally left the house without mine on this morning and had to shop in my coat the entire time.
I’m also hoping that my daughter can somehow continue to avoid caring about what the other girls are doing. This might sound sexist but it always seemed like the popularity game affected the girls more than the boys. I would love it if my children could avoid the pain of insecurity.
This week I’ve heard some of the most amazing writers I know worrying about how much they suck. These are men and women in their 30s and 40s who astound me on a regular basis. These are published authors and A-List Bloggers and people whose words have made me cry or howl with laughter.
Maybe the insecurity never goes away. Hopefully it just gets easier. I feel bad for my kids because they still have to get through the worst of it, and they don’t even know it is coming.
And I can know what I know about growing up and still try not to worry about the shopping bags and dragons I can’t predict for them that I know will show up. And I can be glad that he says he knows he’s a cool kid, for now, for whatever random reason. It can’t hurt to store some of that up for the times when I know he won’t feel that way.
Maybe we will get lucky and all they will have to do to be cool is take their lunches to school in shopping bags. I have hundreds of those and I know where to get more when they run out. I bought the stuffed dragon on eBay so I can replace that too.
But the Kindergarten kid who decided on shopping bags owes me thirty bucks for the Bakugan lunch bag.
1) What is/was your favorite sitcom ever?
