Wednesday, 08 Sep 2010
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Nuttier Than A Fruit Cake...Yet He Studied Classical Tae Kwon Do With Me.
Written by Al Case   
Saturday, 12 June 2010 08:06
I doubt whether most martial arts training halls, be they Gung Fu or Shotokan or Hapkido or whatever, have ever had a crazy guy in their school like Mud Car. We called him Mud Car because that's what his license plates on his car said. That vehicle, more than just about anything else, summed up Mud Car.
by AlCase


I doubt whether most martial arts training halls, be they Gung Fu or Shotokan or Hapkido or whatever, have ever had a crazy guy in their school like Mud Car. We called him Mud Car because that's what his license plates on his car said. That vehicle, more than just about anything else, summed up Mud Car.

He had tied parachute webbing across the insides of his car because he felt that that material was best for holding his car together on the inside. He had fire extinguishers fastened to every surface on the inside of his car. He had a dial on his dashboard to give extra power to his tail lights, and he turned it whenever he faced away from the sun so that drivers behind him could see when he braked.

This was all surface stuff, though. The most impressive thing that Mud Car did was memorize the times of all the traffic lights in San Jose. He could traverse that large town without ever hitting a stop light.

Unfortunately, when it came to the karate, he was just as crazy. He couldn't stretch his limbs, couldn't control what his body was going to do, and, because of this lack of control, it hurt to work out with him. Just being in his presence you could feel the firecrackers in his mind exploding into the universe.

One day he interrupted the instructor because he had a pain in his leg. "It doesn't bother me that much, but i' always there, do you know how to make the pain in my leg go away?" My instructor glared at me with murder in his eyes, I guess he didn't want to glare at Mud Car because he would kill him, and he blurted, "Hit your leg with a lead pipe...that'll make the pain go away."

I suppose the ability to drive the people around oneself crazy is the deciding factor in this matter of whether a person is crazy or not. At any rate, Mud Car was never promoted to Black Belt. He just didn't have the maturity.

One day, however, a new instructor came to the school, and Mud Car was promoted to Black Belt within a month...and then he left the school. He had achieved his goal, and that was all he wanted, and the new instructor knew that was the best and most efficient way to get rid of Mud Car. Yet, I missed Mud Car.

He was nuts, but so is the guy who attacks you on the street, so if you could last a session with Mud Car without getting hurt, you knew your art was effective. Furthermore, there was a shift of standard here, for Mud Car had been given a black belt because he could drive people nuts, not because he was good. Finally, I think that is where the True Art started disappearing from the martial arts training halls...schools, even schools like traditional Karate or Tae Kwon Do or classical Wudan, did not administer soothing discipline to the insane, they just promoted them to get rid of them.

About the Author:

If you want to go crazy through the martial arts...drop on by Punch 'Em Out. If you want to go sane through the martial arts...try Monster Martial Arts. 3