The principles of Taekwondo (which break down as Tae- (foot), Kwon- (fist), and Do- (way)) were ignored to satiate my Power Rangers and Dragon Ball Z power fantasies. I would return home flushed with sweat and knuckles raw from pounding a miniature punching bag, which would make me feel like I was leveling up in the “Don’t Fuck with Me” department. It was then that my step-siblings pestered our parents to take classes, and before I could protest it was the three of us away for an hour, every Monday and Thursday.

And then things got weird.

Within a week the other neighborhood kids caught on, enthralled by this mismatched child cohort strengthening our collective minds, bodies, and spirits. Our cul-de-sac, nestled deep within some hardly cleared New Jersey Pine Barrens (home of the Jersey Devil) lower income housing settlement, had 8 different families. Each family had 1-4 children, so we’re talking +/- sixteen kids all of roughly the same age. And like most children who covet what they do not have, the need to incorporate martial arts into the fabric of your soul spread from house to house with as much rush as trying to feed your Tamagotchi before its digital, neglect induced death.

The next week my karate class had nearly tripled in size. Now it consisted of a couple weirdos like me, my tag-along step-siblings, and quite literally the entire cul-de-sac of all children between the ages of 6-11. When not in the dojo, our combined backyards took the rigidity of a war training camp, as if we were preparing to overtake the neighboring cul-de-sacs by force. We would walk barefoot on rocks and pine needles to harden our feet (Tae). Trees became targets to strengthen our fists (Kwon). I myself started meditating, whatever the fuck that meant for an 8-year-old (Do).

And then things got weird. Again.

The psychic wave of influence jumped from the collective childhood cohort to the parents. I’m not sure whether it was our suburban training regimen or a reflection of their lost childhoods but within two weeks every adult, including my parents, had donned adult-sized Doboks and cinched a sweat absorbed white belt over their aged bodies. The adult classes, a historic and inspiring first for the dojo and no doubt to the financial boon of the sensei, proceeded after the child classes. Each generation would take turns waiting for the other to finish. To watch your grown father be instructed on how to kick a rubber torso by a man whose only ethos was the color of his belt was nothing short of humbling. The sensei was obviously unequipped to handle the now quadrupled class size, ages from 6-50+, and simply repeated the lesson from the child classes to the adult, almost verbatim. A student was a student no matter the egregious chronal discrepancy.

I really dislike that fuckwit Andrew Tate’s schema of “Alphas” vs “Betas”, but we were a cul-de-sac of betas. One would think that the now intergenerational tag-team of living weapons that were our bodies would make civil disputes like lawn encroachment or parking spaces battlegrounds to test our mettle, animal kingdom style. This could not be more incorrect. In fact, the very truth of our community’s collective fighting prowess was transparently quantified. We all knew not a single one of us could kick any other person’s asses. There could be no neighborhood bully because we were all primed to be bullied. We were a village of white belts. There was an equal playing field in every permutation of relationships; siblings older and younger, the hot neighbor down the street, the used car salesmen, even my bartending step-mother and line cook father. All of us were as good at fighting as everyone else. If our cul-de-sac were to encounter a rival cul-de-sac that had even one yellow belt, we would be at a mathematical Taekwondo disadvantage and would thus have to acquiesce to their serfdom.

Fads, by definition, leave as fast as they arrive, and the Suburban Karate Craze of 2002 was no exception. The white-belt graduate ceremony into the second rank of yellow belt did not scale with the advent of the adult class. For the uninitiated, this rite of passage typically involved smashing a decently sized block of wood with your bare fist. If you are below the age of 10, this made you feel like a superhero. If you are above the age of 40, it seemed like, well, child’s play. Almost every adult, suddenly confronted with their own strangeness, did not attend the adult Yellow Belt ceremony. Most of the kids, seemingly off the hook themselves because their parents did not want to seem hypocritical, did not attend their ceremony either. I myself earned the yellow belt and thought myself the community’s protector, because I was, according to rank, the best fighter in the neighborhood.

Per Uncle Ben’s last words to Peter Parker: with great power comes great responsibility. But I didn’t want that responsibility. Because I was eight. So in the closet my yellow belt went, never to be seen again.

I’ve only had to throw down twice since my prudent retirement from the craft, but those are stories for another day.

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