Today I taught a short martial arts class to my six-year-old daughter’s stuffed animals.
She had set up a school for five of her favorite stuffies, who were seated dutifully in a line on the couch. “OK, mommy, it’s your turn to teach,” she said.
“Ok, students!” I walked over to the carpet by the couch where my students were seated. “I’m the martial arts teacher, welcome to my class. To begin, we must learn that an important part about martial arts class is showing respect for each other. We do that by bowing. We bow to each other at the beginning and ending of each class. Today we will learn how to bow.”
The students, voiced by my daughter, twittered amongst themselves.
“Arf arf, I’m the first student!” a blonde puppy stuffy jumped down onto the floor to learn to bow.
“Ok doggy, to bow you bend your head like this,” I said, showing the doggy a traditional karate-style bow.
“Like this?” asked the doggy, as she tried to bow. Doggy bowed, but her head kept flipping. “This is how I bow,” said the doggy, “it’s more like a flip.”
“Uhhhhh…” I said as the circuits in my head all scrambled. You see, in a traditional martial arts class, you try your hardest to do exactly what the teacher is doing. This doggy, a first-time student, was already going a little rogue.
“Can you do it like this, doggy?” I asked, as I showed her the standard bow.
“Oh, like this? Oh, ooooh, no, I always flip when I try! Flipping is just how I bow,” said the doggy, as she flipped through the air.
“Ok, I guess that’s all right,” I said to the doggy, sensing that I might lose control of this class. I figured there was a slight chance my next student could practice a more proper bow.
My next student was a large, blue octopus with a big, squishy head and legs the size and shape of hamburger buns.
“Here’s how you bow, Octopus,” I said as I showed Octi a seated bow.
“Like this?” said Octi, her head lifting in the air.
Now, that was all wrong. I feel like to show respect in a bow, one must lower their head. I told Octi that raising her head just wouldn’t work for a bow. “Or, Octi,” I said, “some styles of martial arts salute with their hands instead of bowing. You could try a salute.”
Octi tried a salute, and I let that pass.
As each of my next three students tried to bow, I learned that my class was full of independent thinkers. The unicorn, the Unspeakable frog, and the tiger each had their own way of bowing. Later in the class when we moved on to horse stance, the unicorn turned out to be a bit of a know-it-all, citing the fact that she practically was a horse, so she knew better than I, the teacher, how to do a horse stance.
From there I just let all of the animals do things their own way. They were obviously not interested in my teaching, and I wondered why I was even hired to teach in the first place. This happens in martial arts classes, sometimes, the students get real full of themselves and just want to do their own thing. I’d seen it happen with five-year-olds, with teenagers, and today I learned that even stuffed animals sometimes lack respect for martial arts decorum.
Michelle Folk Johnson 