As you can see from the picture, Charlie got his green belt.
They had me worried there for a little while. They always call up the kids in a group by the color of the belt they get promoted to, and then announce what color belt they got, and they go in order of the rank, so everyone knows what color is coming next. After they called all the yellow belts, red would be next, and indeed the teachers at the end of the hand-shaking line laid out a bunch of red belts as the kids' names were being called. Charlie's name was called.
He had had a nice, strong performance, no flubs of any kind, so I was certain he would get green, and when his name was called with this group, what ran through my mind was, "Hey, what did he do wrong???" Then, after they called out the last kid's name, they promoted them all to green. There were no red belts this time! So the teachers on the end who were responsible for actually handing out the belts had to scramble very quickly and get out a bunch of the green belts and size them to the kids coming through the line.
He's done a great job so far, but he is about to start the part of karate where you have to start taking people down to the mat and throwing them around. That requires slowing down and doing things very deliberately so you don't hurt anyone. I'm a little worried about this part, since Charlie likes to listen just long enough to think he understands, and then charge in.
Fortunately (or not, depending on your point of view), I have decided to get involved again. Yup, I put on my gi and a brown belt for the first time in several years last week and joined the party. So I will now have the authority to slow him down if I can tell he wasn't really paying attention. Sure, I have that authority as his mother, but somehow there's just an ounce more respect there when you wear a brown belt with a black stripe on it and they know you're only one step removed from being a black belt. (Although, to be perfectly honest, I have absolutely no intention of going for the black, I'm what's known as a "career brown belt," in it just for the exercise and to help teach.)
Yeah, maybe it's Polyanna-ish to think they respect the belt, but hey, it worked with the other one--Rick is STILL a little bit afraid of me, even though he's bigger than I am. Either that, or he's being nice and letting me pretend I'm tougher than he is, since he stopped at blue.
So, how humiliating is it that I ended up with a three-day concussion my first night back? Let the bruises begin...
