Choosing With Sense and Honor

by

Michael Partie

It was my freshman year at the University of South Florida and I was in my dorm room, uncharacteristically diligent, outlining a chapter for my statistics class. A huge crash from the hallway shook the walls of my room, immediately followed by sounds of a scuffle, raucous laughter, and a string of curses. I threw my textbook and Chi Square notes aside and bolted to my door to see what was happening. Five guys from our floor had gone to my neighbor Dave’s room, grabbed him, and hauled him thrashing down the hall to the exterior door, down the stairs out to the pool, and dumped him unceremoniously into the water. It was Dave’s birthday and this looked like what promised to be a recurring alcohol and testosterone-driven celebratory ritual.

by

Michael Partie

Newcomers to Hapkido often find themselves confused and frustrated by the sheer number and baffling diversity of its techniques.  Students with previous training in Tang Soo Do or similar arts may be used to a more linear curriculum, one that methodically introduces more complex skills as one gains competence at more elementary ones. The student learns stances, then simple discrete techniques executed from those stances, then combinations of techniques before combining them into extended sequences through the practice of forms.  One further learns to perform techniques in response to another person through one-step sparring well before being introduced to free sparring and self-defense simulations.

August 1968. My friend Robert Armstrong and I picked our way through unfamiliar campsites under the Pacific sun. Scout troops from all over Guam and from Japan had gathered for the first Camporee ever held on the island. Both eleven years old, I don’t remember why we were on our way to the assembly area or what we were talking about. I don’t remember whether this was the day the monitor lizard invaded our tent or the weekend we got sliced up by sword grass looking for WWII artifacts. I don’t remember whether the rabies outbreak had abated or if it was still in full swing, but what happened as we entered the campsite of the kid with the axe remains vivid to this day. There, in the relentless summer heat, I was moments away from the most powerful demonstration of martial arts in action I have ever seen.