Frustrated at the Dojo

After Sunday's huge effort at the Mad March Hare, I discovered that I have a very tender right knee. When I woke up on Monday morning it was so stiff and painful that I was limping. To make matters worse, I had to abandon my usual ride into work and turn back to use the car!
The biggest concern, however, is the fact that I'm due to run in a charity assault course on Saturday morning:

The Major Series

This means that I have to look after the knee and give it time to heal. This in turn means that I couldn't risk aggravating it by doing karate tonight. I had to be a spectator - one of those dour-faced parents, sitting on the benches at the side of the hall flicking through a phone for an hour or disrespecting the dojo by talking to a friend for the entire lesson.

Martha was very brave and went ahead with the lesson even though I couldn't take part. I made sure my phone was switched off, politely ignored the woman sitting next to me who tried to talk to me, and focused my attention on the karate. Martha's karate is STRONG! She was by far the best orange belt there tonight and her confidence is growing every lesson. I was very proud of her. Every time she came over to our kit-bag for a drink or to put on her training mitts, we exchanged a few words - mainly encouragement and discussions on improvement.

I felt sorry for the other young people whose parents were present but who were staring glassy-eyed at mobile phones, newspapers, books or chatting away to each other and popping out to smoke cancersticks. They should try to take a little more interest in their child's fantastic new interest - Shotokan Karate - and they would probably find that the hour would fly by, just as it did for me.

I was desperate to join in tonight and even considered volunteering when Sensei was demonstrating a technique - even though I was wearing jeans! I can't wait for the knee to heal so I can strap a gi on and get stuck in once more.