Recollections: Final Taekwondo Black Belt Test

My Recollections are instances in my life that I fondly recall for any number of reasons and I've written all of them down on or after June 2009, although the events take place over a very wide time span in my lifetime. Everything you see below is an account of my memory, which can be fickle and unreliable, yet often yields the most important life lessons and records those crucial formative instances in one's life story.

My parents were meeting with longtime family friend Mark Whaley, who they dragged along on a special Friday night occasion: I would be testing for my black belt.

Until this test, I hadn't realized how important Taekwondo had been to me and how important it was in my life, as I would now be done with it for the forseable future as I would head off to Arizona in about a month. It distracted and occupied my time in a healthy way, whereas I might otherwise be watching television at home, wallowing in teenage angst and complaining that I wasn't in a better place

I had initially come to Mark Mett's Cordova Martial Arts Studio to get some badly needeed exersize, learn a martial art, and generally be more productive with my time than many of my peers. Taekwondo gave me a set of goals, a productive routine, and filled a void. It turned me from a whiny, pasty, immature, high school freshman into a fit, scrappy fighter, an amateur athlete, and a disciplined, goal oriented go-getter.

I'd made some friends there. Taekwondo had filled an important void in my life while I was in Memphis: a social/physical activity to replace the outdoorsy activities no longer available to me after I moved to Tennessee from Colorado.

As he awarded me my blackbelt, Mark Metts told everyone to look around and see how many folks my age were accomplishing this task. And he was right. All the other black belt candidates that day were either much older, or much younger than I was. I'd managed to accomplish a formidable task at a time when so many other things could have easily distracted me.

Cordova Martial Arts

Recollections: Climbing in "Booger Hollow"

My Recollections are instances in my life that I fondly recall for any number of reasons and I've written all of them down on or after June 2009, although the events take place over a very wide time span in my lifetime. Everything you see below is an account of my memory, which can be fickle and unreliable, yet often yields the most important life lessons and records those crucial formative instances in one's life story.

Scott and I took off with Chris sometime after 7 PM for Arkansas, where Chris and I planned to initiate Scott Fiddler into the fine sport of rock climbing in a steep gorge in Arkansas' Ozark mountains near a little hamlet called Booger Hollow (yes, a town actually exists with that name). Scott drove his Jeep SUV, while Chris and I brought the gear and chipped in for gas. After 4-5 hours, we arrived after midnight and camped out in a dark little forest not far from the bluffs we'd climb on the next day.

Here's an album of the event below. As you can see, we had a great time. Scott had a blast learning, and Chris and I both found teaching him rewarding.

For me, it was a coming of age. I was months away from graduating high school, and then becoming legally unentangled from my parents. Its the first instance where I took such a long trip that was completely unsupervised and unstructured except for what we made it. I'd climbed bigger climbs, and I'd been to Booger Hollow before without parents (with Chris previously), but doing so on the brink of adulthood made it different somehow.

Scott & I had a bunch of great tales to tell in school the following day, while we'd bonded better and had more fun at work with Chris.

Recollections: My Friend Scott Fiddler

My Recollections are instances in my life that I fondly recall for any number of reasons and I've written all of them down on or after June 2009, although the events take place over a very wide time span in my lifetime. Everything you see below is an account of my memory, which can be fickle and unreliable, yet often yields the most important life lessons and records those crucial formative instances in one's life story.

I met my friend Scott Fiddler my senior year of High School and consider forming this friendship a turning point in my life socially. During most of Middle and High School, I was a social pariah, finding it difficult to form friendships even in the marching band, a place many socially awkward people often make refuge for their awkward, nerdy selves. Before my senior year, I was known more for an outrageous temper and a love of napalm than my ability to make friends and fit in with a peer group.

Scott played tennis and ran track at Houston High School, and was therefore several orders of magnitude cooler than I was (or so I thought). He was a friend who in many ways raised my standing in the school (again, so I thought). And while I hardly reached this conclusion back then, I know it now for sure: Scott and his friends helped me realize the way one acts affects their ability to make friendships and get along with a group. Even in High School.

I met him in a mathmetics class senior year, and while I probably thought then my cool stories about rock climbing and river rafting helped me get along with that bunch, I realize now that it wasn't that at all, but my interest in those people and my efforts to make friends and fit in.

They'd heard my story about the Baskin Robbins burning down, and Scott told me his landscaping boss was looking for a helping hand part time and full time this summer. So he let me tag along, and we headed out to work together every afternoon that spring to rake pine needles, lay mulch, trim trees, lay stone pavers and build garden retaining walls for Charles Farenkompf (spelling)?

I was grateful for the job, I was grateful for the frienship, and I was always grateful for his generosity. It wasn't till much later I realized he wasn't popular because he was all that cool, he was cool and popular because he was a great friend.