Well Joe, I'm not in your league at all and a Go Dan is pretty darn impressive for a white boy. My situation was that I was living overseas as a kid and went to the dojo every day after school. We worked out really hard (an hour of stretching and calisthenics and drills before the lesson even started) and if one of the kids started whimpering and collapsing from the workout, they threw him in the lilly pond with the frogs and the coi. Now, that only happenned once or twice, but it was something to see - a prime motivator. I had to finish up in the states which was tough because my dad was in the service, and we moved every year and a half, and I only ever finally got an Ichi Dan black belt which is really nothing to brag about, but it was like trying to start over everywhere you went - kind of discouraging. Those stories of yours are pretty funny and I had similar experiences in an AAU tournament once, but I didn't steal the show the way you did.
My best American Judo instructor was also a Shi Dan in Ju Jitsu. His name was Jerry, and he was deaf and mostly blind. He was working as an instructor for the Elite Black Forces in Germany, and he was a one man riot squad. If he had you down in a choke hold, you had to make sure you could tap him on the back, cause he couldn't hear you trying to slap the mat and you would wake up on your back looking up at the ceiling with a strang buzzing sensation in your head.. The students hated him cause he would make us do our break falls on a cement floor, but at least you learned to do it correctly. Yeah, those days are gone - we were just lucky.
My best American Judo instructor was also a Shi Dan in Ju Jitsu. His name was Jerry, and he was deaf and mostly blind. He was working as an instructor for the Elite Black Forces in Germany, and he was a one man riot squad. If he had you down in a choke hold, you had to make sure you could tap him on the back, cause he couldn't hear you trying to slap the mat and you would wake up on your back looking up at the ceiling with a strang buzzing sensation in your head.. The students hated him cause he would make us do our break falls on a cement floor, but at least you learned to do it correctly. Yeah, those days are gone - we were just lucky.
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