Sunday, January 13, 2013

MY FIRST PURPLE BELT PROMOTION

FRIDAY, 11 JANUARY 2013

After almost two months of planning and training for a purple belt examination, Matt Hobson flew me up to his home academy in McCalla, AL.  With the help of four other people (Cole Dobbins, Jay James, Meghan S., and Jessica K.), I dragged him kicking and screaming through Charles' curriculum for four hours.  After a quick dinner, we returned to the academy.  I had previously asked him to hold a class so I could watch him teach; he complied and actually taught his class something that I had corrected during his test.

Though I did not say it to him when I originally asked him to hold the class, nor while I was still in Alabama, part of the purpose of the class was to have his students in attendance if I did place a purple belt on him.  He passed my test (which he did not know at that time), and I conferred with Wolfpack's patriarch, Charles Dos Anjos, about promoting him to purple.  Charles gave me valuable advice to consider for future promotion considerations to purple belt.

At the end of Friday's class, I told a few stories from my past regarding a situation where I was responsible for obtaining a purple belt for someone who was not ready for purple at that time, and then another story where I declined to promote my training partner to purple belt since he had decided not to make the trip to Sarasota (where Charles was going to promote him).  So, the first person received a purple and did not deserve one; the second deserved one but did not get it.  I was betting that people were thinking that I was not going to promote Matt to purple.  The two choices left were "does not deserve purple and does not get it," and "deserves it and gets it."  However, I very quickly let it be known that he had passed, called his wife onto the mat, and presented her with the belt so it could be tied around his waist.


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