I don’t mean to brag, but I have assembled a team of the funniest freaking sports bloggers over at Draft Day Suit and I am as proud as I can be.
Even if you don’t like sports, this site will crack you up.
Please do yourself (and me) a favor and go check it out.
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.
And I have no idea how to quit.
I don’t do this much over here, but I wrote this for Draft Day Suit and I thought I’d like to talk to you guys about this too. Don’t forget to click more or you will miss Danica Patrick in a bikini.
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Last week skier Lindsey Vonn was in the news because some jerk in the media suggested that Vonn would have an advantage in the downhill events because she was carrying extra weight, so I was pleased when I saw this week’s cover of Sports Illustrated because I thought Vonn looked terrific.
See? Adorable. The assholes who said she was fat should feel stupid and mean. She looks great right?
This whole thing should be so exciting, women athletes rarely grace the front cover of Sports Illustrated. Hell, women rarely appear on the front cover of SI unless it is the swimsuit issue. I was very pleased when I saw this, a woman athlete, an olympic sport this close to the Super Bowl! Not that I am knocking the Super Bowl in any way. I love the Super Bowl almost as much as I love bacon but it was nice to see something different for a change.
Sadly, things just couldn’t stay nice. People can’t just shut up and be happy for a nice all-American skier, can they? Nope.
“Oh,” cry the women, “she is being objectified!”
No. She really isn’t.
That is what skiers wear. Yes, the pose is exaggerated but it is photography. The photograph is cool. If you see that magazine cover and think about sex maybe the problem lies within because when I see that picture I think about skiing.
As my friend Laurie put it when we were discussing Lindsay Vonn yesterday, “she can’t win, obviously – she’s either cheating to win because she’s fat or she’s hot bending over.”
Women athletes are objectified all of the time – don’t even get me started on Danica Patrick or Anna Kournakova – this is not one of those times.
Let’s all take a deep breath and be excited for the Olympics and skiing and Lindsey Vonn.
Please help up get sports / women’s sports/ sportswriting represented on a panel at BlogHer this year.
All you have to is vote I would attend this session.
You don’t have to be attending BlogHer, you don’t have to be a woman, heck, I don’t even really care if you like sports but I do care that sports and especially women’s sports are undervalued in the media and have never even been discussed at a BlogHer conference.
Please just sign in to your BlogHer account and vote, yes, I would attend this session.
http://www.blogher.com/female-athletes-unspoken-sisterhood
I’ll be your best friend.
Women athletes and sportswriters everywhere thank you.
[photo]
You will never guess what I did.
I signed up for Tae Kwon Do.
Well, I was tricked into signing up for Tae Kwon Do.
Let me back up a little bit.
My five year old son has been dying to take Tae Kwon Do ever since he found out that his best friend at preschool was taking it. I finally got around to signing him up for it a couple of weeks ago.
There was a special where you got your first four lessons and a do-bok (that is how you say little white outfit in Korean) for $79. It isn’t cheap, but he was all about it and my husband and I both thought he would get a lot out of it especially in the area of body control.
You know how little boys are always running in to things.
After two lessons (which he adored) his twin sister decided that she might like it too. So I signed her up.
Last Tuesday I took them in for his fourth lesson and her second lesson. Before the class even started I was whisked in to the office where the Master sat – not one of the underling masters but The Master, the main man, the guy that owns the joint.
It was time for the hard sell.
I don’t have the exact figures but signing the two of them up for a year came to somewhere around one million dollars.
Okay, it was significantly less than one million but also significantly more than I had in my bank account. In fact, thinking about it makes me want to vomit, but I knew it was the right thing to do. Both children love it, it is marvelous exercise and a lot of their friends from school are in there.
Then The Master says to me “What about you?”
I am thinking: There is no fucking way. There are like four other adults here in the kids classes and they all look like gigantic tool bags. The last thing I need to do is spend another $800 to look like an asshole.
My subconscious has a filthy mouth.
I am saying “No. I really can’t afford it.”
Then The Master drops the bomb. “I will give you one year for free if you take the class with the children. It helps them learn at home and stay involved.”
Oh Shit. I think. How can I turn down a year of free Tae Kwon Do? This would actually give me something to write about on Loser Moms.
The Master said that he would give me the free year, but I actually had to show up. If I didn’t actually take the classes he was going to charge me.
So I said yes.
But I was scared.
Really. I didn’t want to do it. My kids were through the roof excited, but I was very apprehensive.
I didn’t want to look like an idiot.
What if I sucked at it?
What if it was hard?
What if all of the five year olds were better than me?
But I had committed to this.
So yesterday I had my first lesson. It was awkward. I had no idea what the lady was saying. Some other parents I knew were there watching their children. But when we broke up in to groups I knew everybody in my group. It was me, Ian (5), Claudia (5), Paige (5) and Emma (6).
I think I probably did look like a tool, but it was kind of fun.
And I wasn’t too bad at it.
And Emma’s mom was really nice about it. She gave me a thumbs up and everything.
So yeah.
My name is Sarah and I am a white belt in Tae Kwon Do.
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Cross-Posted on Loser Moms
