MAMA: Adventures in Martial Arts and Motherhood

There have been a lot of shows this month. The end of the year is always like that, every specialist wants to show off what they have been teaching all year. So we went to the spring concert and the spanish show and now, today, the Max the Cat Circus. To be honest, I am more than a little sick of watching shows. At this point in the school year its all I can do to put pants on my kid. But Maya was really proud of this one ("Mommy you're gonna love the circus show!") and she really was the cutest little robot clown ever. And as I sat there listening to a bunch of first graders singing along to Katy Perry I realized that I was close to tears.  I thought it would only be the end of pre k that would choke me up so I was taken a bit off guard when the whole Kindergarten moving up ceremony got me. But even after that I swore this year would go off without a hitch. No nostalgia. No look how big they all are moments. No tears. But look how big they all are!  Who cares that

For some reason I have spent an awful lot of time this week in Facebook conversations with martial artists. Perhaps it is due to my month long "nobody is allowed to touch my neck" BJJ hiatus, or maybe its the whole Miss USA scandal, but whatever the reason, I have been particularly verbal lately.  The Internet is full of people who have no idea what they are talking about. Particularly when the subject of the martial arts comes up. Everyone has trained in something "when they were a kid" and everyone has watched a UFC match and EVERYONE has an opinion about EVERYTHING. So JoeMMA posts a comment about his training and there are 30 responses and at least three of them say "Joe you are douche.", while four others say "Joe, you rock!" and then there are the rest of us attempting to have an intelligent debate about belt whipping or kata practice or what color rash guard we prefer or whatever. But, after 25 years of karate and 3 plus years of BJJ,

Ok, I’ll bite. You want to know what I think of Nia Sanchez, the newly crowned Miss USA, commenting that women should learn self defense in order to fix the campus rape problem. Or whatever it was she said. Never mind that it is likely her statements were written by some pageant publicist. Never mind the question of why we would expect Miss Nevada, who is beautiful and seems at least somewhat intelligent, to know how to solve the college campus rape problem. And never mind that the very existence of a beauty pageant is a direct threat to the whole #yesallwomen movement, that instead of complaining about what she said on stage we should be complaining about why in 2014 there is still a competition that involves women dressing up like princesses and getting scored on how well they curled their hair. (Yes, I still occasionally watch Toddlers and Tiaras. And yes, it is still horrifying.) Also never mind the fact that all the news sources are advertising her as a “mar