Last Sunday, during karate class, to be kind to myself, I stunk the place up. I wasn’t in the mood to go but, over the years, have finally taught myself that those are the times I most need to go. That’s also true with writing–both my novel, my other novel, the other other novel, and this blog.

However, last Sunday’s lesson was so bad, and I had such a horrible lack of focus, that it has me thinking about excuses versus reasons.

One of the knife defense techniques we do involves stepping forward and catching the knife arm with our left hand and then doing a kind of hockey check with our right and then doing one of many techniques. The most difficult involves twisting the opponents wrist at the same time as you push his hand up toward his shoulder. Although I’m still pretty sloppy, I can do it consistently when my opponent has a knife. When my opponent has a sword, though, I find I can’t do the technique at all. I blame my height and my opponent’s lack of it.

As near as I can tell, when I’m defending against a knife, my opponent’s arm is in a high position, well above my waist, which allows me to do the technique. When he uses a sword, however, he’s using both arms, which gives him a stronger position, and they’re down below my waist. From that position, I find I can’t get the position and leverage I need to lift his arms. It’s the difference between lifting a heavy box off a table or lifting it off the floor. I would argue that I should focus on techniques that work against my opponent rather than one ones that I don’t think the laws of physics allow me to do.

Now, is all that an excuse, or is it a reason?

I ask because about a hundred years ago, more or less, in my Hayden, Colorado days, it was a tradition (in either 5th or 6th grade) that boys who volunteered could spend a week doing football practice (the kind with helmets, not the kind that England suffers at in the World Cup) and that culminated in a Friday game. This all started off with a bull rush to get uniforms and equipment.

The uniform , not the safety equipment, was the most important thing to get. The uniforms were either dark green (nicknamed the Green Bay Packers) or red (nicknamed the whatever the hell they are now Cardinals). Once issued a uniform, the recipients formed rival gangs and pretty much bullied each other for the rest of the week. (I vaguely remember there being depantsings of Cardinals which, well, yeah, think about it). The coolest uniform to get was the Green Bay Packers which meant the largest boys in the class wore green and you wanted to be on their team. (Remember: depantsings.)

At the end of the bull rush, which involved me being repeatedly pushed to the back of the line, I ended up with a pure white jersey that didn’t even have a number on it. This meant I was simply referred to as “white shirt” in practice. I wasn’t the only one who got a white shirt but I remember being bummed out about it. The white shirt wasn’t cool to wear on designated “wear your uniform jersey day”. I would be standing out without having any standing, if that makes sense. I went to one day of practice and then quit.

To this day I blame fashion for this as much as the soreness. Both are pretty weak excuses, though. I do wonder what would have happened had I been issued an actual jersey, Even now, I remain subject to those kinds of initial impressions. I’ve gotten better at recovering from them, but back then I couldn’t. I therefore didn’t give my best in practice–not that my best would have been that impressive anyway–and decided football wasn’t for me. (Believe me, it wasn’t.)  I sucked at basketball, too, but I liked playing basketball.

It turned out that I would have ended up as a Green Bay Packer and would have been on the winning team. It’s just no one would have known that.