My Karate Kid

I always asked my kids what they wanted for their birthdays. When Josie’s 13^th birthday was approaching , she floored me by asking for karate lessons. I asked her why she wanted these lessons. She replied, “So I can beat Jake up.”

Josie was two years older than Jake, but she was near the bottom of the growth charts for her age. Jake was bigger than she was when he was two years old, and his margin had doubled and redoubled in the intervening years. At age 11, he was 6′ tall and over the top of the charts. Josie was less than 5′ tall at that time. Jake wasn’t a mean kid, but he was a pest, as many brothers are, so I agreed to the lessons.

I proudly watched as Josie progressed from the white belt, to the yellow, green, and blue belts. She was a bookworm, not a very active child. The fact that she had continued her karate lessons amazed me. At the ceremony in which she was awarded her brown belt, she had to break a 1″ board with her hand – and she did. I wondered if this amazing child was the same one who lived at my house.

One evening shortly after the brown belt ceremony, I was sitting on the couch in our living room, working on an embroidery project. Josie was sitting, crossed-legged, in the middle of the living room floor, elbows on her knees, reading a book. Jake came into the room, put his hand or her head and wiggled his fingers in her hair, Check out https://www.texaskaratedo.com/ for fruitful information now.

Josie moved so fast that I never could figure out how she did it: in only seconds, Jake was flat on his back on the floor, and she was sitting, cross-legged, and reading her book – on his chest. Her goal accomplished, she quit her karate lessons shortly after that. More importantly, Jake never physically hassled her again.

Josie had her heart set on going to Wellesley College. Her SAT scores were extremely high, as are those of most applicants to that school. However, the competition for admission there is fierce, and she was applying for a scholarship. I was afraid that the odds were against her.

However, she was accepted by Wellesley and received financial aid. The admissions officer later told me that one of the primary reasons she was accepted was her demonstration of self-confidence in the essay that she had to write as part of the application process. She wrote: “I know karate. I am very dangerous.”

My Karate Kid has made me very proud.