Is Your Karate Good, Great or Awesome?

I was at a social outing a few of weeks ago. There were a bunch of people there that I didn’t know so inevitably you end up making the rounds getting introduced to various people. Among the people I met were a nice couple from out of town. Like most first encounters the conversation led to “What do you do?”. When I tell people one of the things I do is own a dojo I generally get 1 of 3 responses:

1. Self response: “I took ___________ (insert martial art here) when I was a kid for a few weeks” or “I take _____________ (insert martial art here)”

2. Relative response: “My cousin, brother, nephew, 4th removed uncle takes __________ (insert martial art here)”

​3. Embarrassingly ignorant response: “Can you beat me up?”, “I better not mess with you”, “Show me a move”, “How many blackbelts do you have?”.

No matter what response I get I’m generally pretty cordial and play along. This particular couple fell into the response 1 category, for the sake of the story lets call them Jane and Jon. They both practiced (some style I’ve never heard of) karate and were very happy and excited to be doing it. While most of the conversation was a pretty typical one between martial artists there was one part in the middle that stuck with me and it went something like this:
​
Jane: Jon is awesome at karate. He is much better than me.
Jon: Your great too honey.
Jane: No, I’m a little good but not great.
Jon: No your great, you won the dojo tournament last month.
Me: How often do you guys train?
Jane: We go to classes twice a week, but Jon goes on Saturdays too thats why he is so awesome!
Jon: Boy this wine is really good, I wonder what kind it is?

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