Tornado Kick!

We of the Wheatley clan have a history of extreme behavior. We don’t parachute, race cars or backyard wrestle. We don’t white water raft, nor do we compete in marathons or any of that crazy, life risky exercise stuff. We are extreme suburbanites. Our extreme behavior is common behavior done extremely.

Let’s use last night as an example of this. A parent may encourage his 5 year old Taekwondo star to learn new techniques by watching his qualified instructors do it. Not me. I use youtube to learn moves and then attempt to “teach” the new cool move to a very skeptical child. Last night it was the mighty tornado kick. This is what its supposed to look like:



OK, OK, I lied... Although I'm sure there's a tornado kick somewhere in there. To be honest, the tornado kick is actually not that impressive and well, this guy Steve Terada is. So substitute him in the video for me and you'll get a perfect mental imagine of me in action!

Anyway, once I have the move down, I then attempt to teach it to Jake. Bless his cotton socks, he always humors his old man and genuinely tries not to laugh. He doesn’t roll his eyes when I suggest that we learn a new cool move together. He almost never ridicules me when I usually learn, 20 minutes into a painful unintended split, that the move is actually called ChonChopChop. He’s also very humble as I sit like a wounded bird with a broken wing and watch him execute ChonChopChop like Jackie Chan of Kindergarten.

Another problem with this is that I’m not very well coordinated. I don’t take direction very well and I don’t actually take any Taekwondo classes myself. I’m also very impatient and usually consider myself “informed” before the end of the video.

This is how I sprained my groin. This is why I hobbled out of bed this morning at 6am to get some painkillers and an ice pack. This is why right now, as I type this, I have an ice pack on my groin. This is also why my balls are turning blue.

I won’t be able to teach Jake any kicks today and this makes me sad. We won’t be able to spar today – him in his robokid pads and me in my PJs. I won’t be able to kick him in the head today. He won’t be able to kick me in the stomach, hammer fist the back of my head and then knee me in the nose like last week. Sad isn’t it? This is why today I’m going to teach him the thunderous spinning back fist technique… It’s easy enough. I just looked it up on youtube.