Boys with sticks

Today is the first day of Tiger Kum Do class for Robbie and his best friend Jacob. It's a special Korean sword fighting class that Master Hughes has created with some of the latest sword fighting practice equipment--swords made of flexible foam--and it's just for boys.

So in the dojang are 5 ten-year-old boys, or maybe 4 ten-year-olds and one older boy. They are given plastic practice swords, and they practice swinging them the Kum Do way, way back over thieir head, then STRIKE! Way back over their heads, then STRIKE!

Robbie has a happy look on his face.

Then practice hitting a dummy made of tires. Whack! Whack! Boys are swinging. Boys are smiling. They run and whack the heck out of that dummy. Then they put on chest pads and helments and mitts and foam swords and they whack the heck out of each other.

What is it with boys and sticks?

I remember a young mom (of a daughter) telling me she hoped her next child would not be a boy. "They're so violent when they get mad!" she said. She then goes on to tell me an example, a time when she saw a boy in his front yard with a stick. "He was just whacking the tree and whacking the tree! He must have been so angry!" I assured her that boys whack when they are not angry, too. In fact, give a boy a stick, and he'll whack.

Robbie and Jacob are both smiling and sweaty after the class.

"That was cool!" says Jacob. "I have to practice those swings at home!"

"I want to get some of those pads!" says Robbie. "It would be fun to fight with Eli."

So is this post somehow tied with the one on self-defense from yesterday?

I'll get some pictures on Thursday!