White Belt: Crash Course
On her first day at the dojang, Jen was shy, as all people are their first time in a new place. The only person she knew there was her older brother JT. He had convinced Jen to give taekwondo a try after she had been carted back and forth to the dojang for a year and a half while he took classes. Jen wasn’t sure martial arts were her kind of thing, but her parents had willingly agreed to sign her up for a month of classes to see how it went. If she liked it, they said they would renew the contract for a longer period of time, and if she didn’t like it, well, then it was only a month. With nothing to lose, Jen had put on her new uniform and now here she was, intimidated by this new environment.
The rest of the students in the class consisted of a red belt, a blue belt, a black belt, and a boy wearing a brown belt with a black stripe through the middle of it like JT’s. All of them were older than twelve-year-old Jen. The instructor, a college-age guy with short but messy black hair, stepped into the dojang, bowing to the American, Korean, World Taekwondo Federation, and Kukkiwon flags on the wall as he did so. He tugged at his black belt embroidered with his name, some strange symbols that Jen guessed were Korean, and two stripes on it to straighten it out. “Morning, class,” he said with a stifled yawn. He had obviously not rolled out of bed long ago.
A mumbled mixture of “Good morning”s came in response.
The instructor stretched his arms and arched his back, then twisted back and forth a few times, cracking his back. “Did you guys say something?” he asked. “I couldn’t hear you through all the mumbling.”
The class responded in unison, “Good morning, sir!”
“That’s better,” the instructor said with a nod and a slight smile. “Let’s jog a bit to warm up.”
The class immediately started running in counterclockwise circles around the room; the instructor turned on some upbeat techno music and joined his students. After a few minutes of jogging forward, backward, and sideways, the instructor called a halt and turned off the stereo. “Everybody line up!” he called.
Jen, not really knowing what was going on, apprehensively hung back while the other five students formed a row across the front of the room in descending belt order. Just as Jen was starting to feel quite uncomfortable and awkward – she turned her toes in toward each other and looked down at her crisp white uniform – the instructor called, “Hey there! White belt!” Jen hurriedly looked up, half afraid she was already in trouble for doing something wrong.
“Hey,” the instructor said again, meeting her gaze. “Sorry I didn’t see you before. Guess my brain is still at home in bed.”
Jen half-smiled.
“What’s your name?”
“Jen,” she said quietly.
“Girl, you gotta speak up. I can’t hear.”
“Jen,” she repeated a little louder.
From the look on the instructor’s face, he still couldn’t hear what Jen was saying. At this point, JT spoke up. “Her name’s Jen. She’s my little sister.”
“Oh!” said the instructor. “Jen. Nice to meet you. I’m Evan; I usually teach this class.” He stuck out his hand, and Jen gingerly shook it. “You can come line up next to Clay,” Evan said, gesturing to the empty space to the left of the blue belt; Jen quickly obeyed.
