{"id":71,"date":"2022-01-10T21:06:33","date_gmt":"2022-01-10T21:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zaponline.org\/blogs\/?p=71"},"modified":"2022-02-04T15:24:39","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T20:24:39","slug":"martial-arts-written-circa-2001","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zaponline.org\/blogs\/?p=71","title":{"rendered":"My Life In Martial Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written circa 2001 by Terence Micharoni<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved martial arts. As a young lad, I used to watch all those corny kung fu shows every Saturday. Then came 1983. The ninja craze was born, and I became obsessed with it. I bought and traded tons of shurikens (A\/K\/A Chinese stars) in the grammar school, and bought several other ninja-related items as well (hand claws, blo-guns, books, etc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My friends and I used to throw them in my backyard at targets, the garage, and some doll I pretended was my sister. I wanted to be like Sho Kasugi (a popular ninja movie star in the 80’s) when I grew up. I just had to find a ninja school somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I never did find that school. To make a long story short, I was at the mall one day in May, 1993 when someone from the NY Institute Of Martial Arts (a popular tae-kwon-do dojang in Staten Island, NY) was giving out posters and sign-up information, and I took one. I let about a week or two go by, and realized I was an adult, and certainly wasn’t getting any younger. So I called up, came in, and signed up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first day was Monday, June 7, 1993. I wasn’t nervous, since two girls were there just starting also. As time moved by, I slowly moved up in rank. Then came the big day, on March 10, 1996, the day I was to become a black belt. I had to do three fairly hard breaks, three step-sparring, one form, and one brick break. Well, I passed, and am proud to be a first degree black belt in tae-kwon-do. I haven’t been to a karate class since 2000, but would love to go back one day soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Black Belt picture day, June 1996<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written circa 2001 by Terence Micharoni For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved martial arts. As a young lad, I used to watch all those corny kung fu shows every Saturday. Then came 1983. The ninja craze was born, and I became obsessed with it. I bought and traded tons of shurikens… Continue reading My Life In Martial Arts<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-martialarts","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zaponline.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zaponline.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zaponline.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaponline.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaponline.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaponline.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaponline.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/84"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zaponline.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaponline.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaponline.org\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}