Kristen, you're not a kid any more.

I probably should have told myself that before my brilliant little stunt attempt during our karate demo team practice yesterday. But sometimes, when you're surrounded by nine- to twelve-year-olds, you start to take on their mentality, particularly the "I'm made out of rubber and steel" mentality.

In my defense, it wasn't actually something all that hard or dangerous. I'm big on symmetry when I'm choreographing our demontrations, and there's one particular part where I needed to find some way for me and one kid to change places in the least awkward way possible. With a different set of kids in the past, I solved this by having one kid kneel down pretty low and another kid run and do a diving roll over the first one. The kid with whom I need to swap places is the smallest kid on the team, and so I was thinking, hey, I can probably do that move. Get him to kneel down and I'll run and dive over him and do a forward roll. I'm not stupid, though. (For most people, my saying that would mean I put it out of my mind as a possibility, but no.) I wasn't about to try this with a live child to potentially be squashed beneath my falling, spastic self. So I took a few kicking shields and stacked them to what would probably be his height if he was ducking down in front of me and gave the move a shot.

The first time, I tried it as a straight up diving somersault. I'm thinking that's what's responsible for the pain today. Cause holy crap did that cause the tingling of the spine (and stinging of the back as I landed). So I was like, "bad choice." Not that that stopped me. I decided to try it as a shoulder roll (which is like a somersault but you turn your upper body to the side slightly so your head doesn't hit the ground and only a little bit of your spine is ever in contact with the floor - I think it is frequently called an aikido roll, as well). The first time was a bust, and no doubt looked hillarious to all the kids watching me try this, but third time was a charm and I nailed the move. And then practiced it about ten more times. I got it on tape, too, and can see that not only do I NOT look like a total spaz, but I'm still giving the "kid" about a foot of space between "him" and me. I'm by no stretch of the imagination a master tumbler or by any definition a gymnast, but I can pull this off and add it to the demo without worrying about killing one of my students.

However, I did learn a good lesson yesterday -- the one referenced in the entry title. If I were still twelve, I doubt that I would have had any soreness today, but unfortunately, 26 years on this earth + a similar number of extra pounds of body weight + diving over a two-foot-tall inanimate object + a few mistakes learning the move = sore 26 year old. If I had yesterday to do over again, I would have still done the same thing (though maybe taking out the two failed runs at the beginning).