Beware: I am mean.

A little something you have to know about me.

Apparently, I'm mean. But, I don't mean to be mean. :P

So, Olympic Taekwondo is all about kicking. That's how you score points. They're now incorporating rules that award points for punches...but nobody actually scores them yet. Like, we're supposed to, but we're all hard-wired for just kicks, so that's still the name of the game. Kicks to the head get more points than kicks to the body. Naturally, the more advanced your rank, the more people tend to kick to the head. In the Black Belt ranks, you hear of people called "head hunters" who do nothing BUT head kicking. But that's another story.

I tend to get underestimated a lot. You see, I am not quite 5'3" tall. I'm stocky. Sparring matches are assigned by rank, age and weight. So a girl who's a lot taller than me will be a lot skinnier than me and weigh the same. So I tend to fight a LOT of people who are taller than me. This gives them a huge advantage--my head is a lot easier to reach. And I don't look like a fighter--I'm stocky and...well-endowed in certain areas. This all plays into the underestimation.

As I proved yet again today, I can hold my own in a fight. The first girl I fought today was at least 7 or 8 inches taller than me. Granted she was older than me. But still, she should have walked all over me with head kicks. But you see, I'm scrappy. I do a lot of what we call "jamming"--I stay in really close to her, where I can still nail her but she can't get to me because I"m too close. And I play mind games, which is really where these matches are won. I'm loud, I'm confident, I smile--rather wickedly sometimes--and then I beat the tar out of them. Ya, I get tired. My endurance isn't what it should be, and I'm not as fast as I need to be. But I win.

I was still coming off the high from my first fight when I went into the second--an exhibition match, which means that the opponents aren't people who would normally be put into a bracket together because of differences in either age, rank or weight. In this case, it was age--she was 48, I think. I, um...kind of wiped the floor with her. I didn't mean to. But I've been well trained and I was in tournament mode, and it was really hard for me to back off. Fortunately, she was still cheerful and upbeat later. It's never my intention to really discourage anybody--and when you lose 27 to 3, that has a strange tendency to occur. :-/

Nobody looking at me would think I'm an athlete. Nobody looking at me would think "ninja" or "fighter." Nobody looking at me would think that I know more ways to hurt or kill someone than I care to count. Nobody looking at me would think "martial artist." But that is how I think of myself. I am a martial artist. And on days like today, it's nice to know inside that I am good. At least, I can hold my own. I might not look like much, but I warn you--don't underestimate me. Because apparently, I'm mean.