Anyone who’s read my blog all along will know that there are a fair number of bullies in my history. I’ve had some experience with stalkers, and with people who play manipulative, sneaky mind-games to get a power-trip.
I also realize that my experience is not unique. Everyone has had an encounter with a bully, lots of people have had stalkers, and most people have experience with people in their lives who to some extent enjoy the occasional mind-game power-trip.
This is why it’s important to tell these stories. So that when we encounter these people, we recognize them for what they are. So that we do not allow them to continue on their path without being called on their behavior, and so that we do not allow them greater access to our lives, spirits and psyches than is strictly necessary.
Plus, this story has some jazz to it. It has martial arts, tradition, loyalty, glory, honor, death! OK, not death. Maybe not glory either. And there is a mullet involved. Hey, no story is perfect if told accurately. I could polish this baby up for you, and I may someday, but for now I shall tell it straight. When I do my great martial arts fantasy epic (with Christina Ricci playing the character based on me, of course), you will be able to say that you were one of the first to hear the true story it was based on.
It begins with a Kung Fu school here in Eden Prairie run by a man I shall call “Captain Mullet”. I call him that because he sports a mullet of epic proportions. The front stands tall, adding a double-curving four-inch pouf to his smaller-than-average height. The back hangs to below his waist.
Despite the fact that he must be at least sixty years old, it is a shiny, lustrous black…no doubt a testament to the skill of a very discreet hair-dresser who has a sensitivity to the fragile machismo of this particular martial artist.
Anyway, as tempting as it is to let the mullet steal the scene, it is the man the mullet perches atop that is of interest to us. I liked Captain Mullet quite a lot. He was energetic, personable, out-going, funny, and not that much more full-of-brass than any other martial arts master I’ve met.
My instructor, lets call him…Ash (mostly just because I think it will bug him) had studied Kung Fu with Captain Mullet for a couple of decades, and was one of his most advanced students.
Ash is also personable, energetic, funny, outgoing, and fairly full-of-brass. It’s a martial artist thing; intense confidence, easily perceived as arrogance. It’s tough to find one that doesn’t have it, and many have skills that fully justify it.
Anyway, Ash actually taught the class I attended. Captain Mullet swept in on test days, and later when I started weapons and sparring class, he was my teacher for those subjects. Otherwise, though, I was Ash’s student and was quite happy with that.
Ash’s teaching style was to push you just enough to keep you uncomfortable, accepting the progress you made, without letting you lose sight of the goal and perfection. No yelling, no military rigor, just a sort of gentle, constant pressure for continuous effort and improvement, and never letting you forget just where you are in relation to the mark of perfection, and that perfection is the goal.
He doesn’t appear to accept that there is anything that a given student cannot do. His attitude seems to be that all limitations are temporary and any student can master any technique. This is why I can do tornado kicks. I told him repeatedly that I would never be able to do them (bad back, congenital defect in the spine of the lower back). He’d smile and nod and give me some pointer or another to try. Together, he, I, my chiropractor (along with some especially grueling low-back exercises) got me through the tornado kicks…and I am a stronger, healthier person because of it.
When I started studying with him, I couldn’t do one push-up (was able to when I was younger…but I’d been out for some time), now I can do fifty on a good day. I couldn’t do a tornado kick, and thought I never would, now they are easy and fun. Today, I can’t do a butterfly kick, but I no longer assume that there are things I’ll never be able to do.
A couple of years went by, and I finally got my red sash. The night I passed the red sash test I showed up at class and told Ash about it. He invited me to go out with him and the other senior students to get a beer, and there he told us that he has worked out a plan to start teaching full time, develop a business and quit his day-job. He had a business plan that cut Captain Mullet in for a substantial piece of the action. He was going to talk to Captain Mullet about it, but it was possible that Captain Mullet would react badly and kick him out of the school.
What was really unfortunate was that the story somehow got leaked to Captain Mullet before Ash was able to talk to him…so it didn’t look good, and Captain Mullet was not put in a mind-frame to listen to reason, assuming he would have anyway.
So he kicked Ash out of the school, and sent us a letter saying that he and his wife and kids would be teaching us instead, from now on.
Now, so far, I thought the whole thing was unfortunate. Captain Mullet was being a little paranoid and unreasonable, I thought, to expect the worst from a student that he had trained for twenty years, and not listen to reason.
I and all but five of the other students decided that we would continue to train with Ash. I don’t remember how many of use there were…probably around twenty adults, and twenty children.
Since we didn’t have a classroom, we met in the park. Since we couldn’t meet in the park and be a “class”, Ash did not charge us for lessons.
If you have never been in the martial arts, or have never known anyone in the martial arts, you might not realize the special relationships that people form in the classes. They are most analogous, I suppose, to a mentor/protégé relationship. The analogy of a family is traditional, but that’s not quite it either. It’s just a feeling of belonging with certain people, working toward a common goal, which is the success of every student and pride in the school, each other, yourself. I’m explaining this to you so you will understand why most of us made the decision to leave the larger school and stay with our instructor. It was nothing against Captain Mullet, who we still liked despite thinking that he was being a bit unreasonable.
“Someone” soon found out where we were meeting, and sent the police out to talk to our instructor. They told him we couldn’t meet in the park, and I’m sure that if we had pushed it, there wouldn’t have been a thing they could do, but by the time this happened, Ash had set up a class through another city…where we all instantly registered.
Unfortunately, some of the places where he was trying to start classes got “anonymous” letters telling them that he was not a qualified instructor, and that he was running a “cult”. The deals that he was making with those places fell through, not surprisingly.
We students began to get letters informing us that he was “decertified” and “unqualified”. Some of the letters threatened to involve us in legal action against him if we continued as his students. One of the letters threatened to subpoena my oldest son, who was eight years old at the time. Most of the letters were anonymous, and sent from Hong Kong. Portions of them are in Chinese, and therefore unreadable of most of us. There is no useful return address. The most useful one was a P.O. Box in Canada. I just got another one of these yesterday.
My instructor has been getting a variety of letters, including death threats, even one that had been made to appear that it was splattered with blood.
This has been going on for nearly four years. At this point, we figure that there’s pretty much nothing to the death threats and the legal threats.
But I was very uneasy for a while. You see, one thing I’ve learned is that if someone feels they can use force against you…real or implied…to get you to do what they want, then they have rejected the social contract of a free society…they do not acknowledge your right to make your own decisions, and feel justified, for whatever reason, in using force and coercion. At that point, you don’t know where they have drawn the line…at what level of force they will stop…what sorts of behavior they will find acceptable.
Someone, for we cannot prove conclusively that it is indeed Captain Mullet who is behind these letters, has apparently drawn the line at hiding and sniping from behind rocks, careful to not get caught and careful to not do anything that might betray his position.
What mystifies me is that Eden Prairie Community Education continues to do business with Captain Mullet, despite the complaints that we have lodged with them. I have sent them copies of all the letters, and stated that it is my belief that Captain Mullet is behind them. All I got for my troubles was a registered letter from Captain Mullet demanding that I stop or be sued for libel. I have continued to inform them of the letters and no further action has come from him.
At any rate, I made a phone call today, and wrote a letter, which I will mail tomorrow (as nobody from Eden Prairie Community Education has returned my call). This is a little bit about loyalty, but I don’t think that they will really do anything to hurt our school, or my instructor.
Some people have suggested that I stop sending off letters and trying to get this stopped when it is clear that this is the extent of their activity. I should get over it and ignore it…not waste my time. But this is no longer about what they “might” do, or about how I feel when I get the letters.
Mostly, it’s about repeatedly saying “no” to cowardly, thuggish, anti-social, and criminal behavior. It’s about telling people who accept it and ignore it that it is not acceptable, and that they are complicit when they ignore it.
It’s about not letting the bastards win…even a little bit.