My speech at the ceremony honoring my teacher's elevation to 8th degree black belt and my student's elevation to 6th degree black belt
Adventures Of A Black Belt Sommelier
Black belt ceremony speech
I've got to memorize it, I've read it to my wife about 25 times, to be sure I didn't say anything I should. I've had this disease from him, like I've been here to get through this enough to crack it up. I've been asked to speak equality by about ceremonies here over the years, but I've prepared speech until today, however I feel this moment is so important, way too important to add to my comments, is my younger sister, who's never had any involvement in Ferrari, said, when I told her about this day, this is a safe occasion. My son, and I met my son over there, and I met Mr. Jones over 30 years ago when my wife was interested, we might want to sign up for a variety of lessons, because he was kind of small, and I was just excited about it. At the time, Mr. Jones was the head and structure of David H. Price videos. We only saw Mr. Beaten on test days, his beat was starved, it was really starved, and I think his hair kind of cost more than my car. One day, another instructor called us, that Mr. Jones had moved to Florida to take up the car. I didn't really believe that this was the truth, and we were being pressured to sign up for a year's worth of classes, so I decided maybe Ferrari wasn't for us after all. A few months later, a friend said, "Didn't you used to study Ferrari with a guy named Conrad Jones? He's opened a new school in Frankly, and we tracked him down at a little tiny storefront. I think we had to break the cot as a half, because the ring wasn't large enough to run the whole thing. You weren't ever there in that little ring. No, you were. In our lives of Ferrari again and again, there have been a lot of locations since the Maryland's arms, the Nippers Corner, the Y, and Frankly, the Church for a while. Grassland and other than the one constant was Mr. Jones. I've been asked several times over the years, "What's the best martial arts to study?" I always say that it just doesn't matter what matters is the martial artists you study with. We hit the jackpot with Mr. Jones, and a little while later, this blonde bombshell walked in the door to sign her son, and take classes with us. We got Mrs. Jones's part of our lives to be the name of the man. It's okay to call her my husband as he used to. I asked her, and my wife, if it was okay. So, what have I learned over the years? I've learned some really important lessons. I've learned that this is a muskle, and I've learned that if you were equally and best extras with both hands, you were amphibious. I've learned to count to 10 in Japanese. I have no idea what 11 is. I've learned to pronounce the word "nickel waschitachi." I've learned that if you want to keep winning the high-techy contest, it's better not to keep Mr. Jones in the forehead in the intent. I've learned that if you practice self-defense techniques on the environment from the school while winning for Mr. Jones to arrive, you're going to need new geeze because the rest things will come out. I've learned that if you're going to hold the pad for Mr. Taylor to practice step up, running sidekits, you'd better eat your wheeze that morning. And I've learned that if you run the self-defense techniques with Tim Clark, that's going to be more painful than holding the pad for Mr. Taylor. And I've learned that the most dangerous thing you can do in this school is to call Ms. Pong Missus. I wish you were here. Mrs. Pong had taught me that even if you already have a white belt, you know, the martial art. It's best to begin your study here with humility and a sense of humor, and I know you've all seen that. I know that Triton repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, to teach me that when you try it, when you block a punch with a low block, you don't have to break your attacker's wrist. You just need to make the punch miss. And I've learned that when my son complains that his hand is bothering, it might be because I broke a bone with him with a low block. But the less, though, this is the bigger lesson that's impacted the most over the years that have worn morning when I was wearing street clothes, not a geeze. I arrived one day in class at the white estate, and Mr. Jones wasn't there. I went, there was, you know, a story. I went to receptionist's hand. This is an outrage. I grew up 45 minutes again here, and he came by Mother to be here, and, well, she didn't deserve that. She was just doing her job almost in class. And then I learned later that Mr. Jones wasn't there because he was at the funeral for Lynn Harris. He was first playing class. I've thought about that moment with tremendous regret many times over the years. Everyone deserves to be treated with courtesy and respect, and very often a person that has made him mad deserves to be forgiven because there's a compelling reason for it. Those are the two most important lessons I've learned from my study in this school. One final, I've heard from parents, I'll talk a few times over the years that they didn't want their kids to take karate classes because they didn't want to encourage them to fight. But what's the overriding emotion in this spring right now? Is it combativeness, is it adventurous, is it aggression, perhaps it's respect, perhaps it's pride. Perhaps it's a warranted sense of accomplishment, but I would say the overriding emotion in this room is love. It's love for Mr. and Mrs. Jones, love for all the students, love for parents, have their kids, and kids have their parents, and love for all that for each other, like this guy. Little did the two guys who attacked him 40 years ago at Starwood know that they were studying emotion and chain of events that would result in this moment today. So if we look in this moment that adds, my sister said, this way, if we live here today and we spread that love and abuse this friend, around the world, the world will be about a place. And I think that is what being a black belt in this school is really all about. [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Band Warms Up with Background Chatter] [Band Warms Up with Background Chatter] [Band Warms Up with Background Chatter] [Band Warms Up with Background Chatter] [BLANK_AUDIO]