Kung Fu madness!

Sat in the freezing cold gym of the local high school watching my 9 year old son have his Kung Fu lesson this evening, I was giving careful thought as to whether I agree with him doing it or not. As those who know me will know, he lives with his Mum and her boyfriend and for reasons unknown, they insist on signing him up for all manner of activities at the weekend and school holidays, regardless as to whether Jake has expressed an interest in it or not. Along with his football on Saturday morning, now he has Kung Fu on a Saturday evening. After a handful of lessons, he seems to enjoy it. But there are a few things that bother me about the whole thing.


Firstly, it's ridiculously overpriced. That is to say, it's alot of money to be shelling out on a 9 year old who might in a few weeks decide he doesn't want to do it, which he'd be within his rights to. The £5 a week fee seems a bit steep, even if the guy doing the lesson is the 3 times World Champion (or something along those lines). Then there's the £50 signing on fee (which to be fair I haven't been asked to contribute to outside of my Child Support payments but I'll get to my point in a minute) and then the various accessories: boxing gloves, head guard/helmet, pads, nunchucks etc. which seem to cost upwards of twenty quid each. In short, I just think the whole thing is too much money, nearly £400 for the first year. Any normal person would look at the numbers and look for a cheaper alternative (apparently his Mum thinks it's alot of money too but pays up anyway. Me, being the non-resident parent, I more or less have to go along with it for the sake of not upsetting her and getting a load of ear ache in the process).


Secondly, without wanting to get into an argument on the morality of combat sports, I'm not sure I want him getting involved in this kind of thing. It's fine whilst he's just learning some moves and doing some light sparring with kids his own age and younger, but as he gets older it gets more violent (my son's class overlaps with the adults and they batter the shit out of each other, albeit with gloves and pads on). I know it's supposed to be for self defence rather than to attack someone but I'm just not keen, especially when my son let slip that the whole thing seems to be an attempt by his mum's boyfriend to toughen him up.


Now, he's not the biggest kid but he doesn't need to toughen up. To me, that suggests he needs to be able to handle himself in a fight. No one ever 'toughened me up' but if I had, I reckon I'd have started more fights and that's what worries me. While I wouldn't watch someone getting beaten up if I could break it up, or run off while my mates got battered, knowing to stay out of those situations has meant that as an adult, I've only ever got into two fights (one when my pissed mate was being a tool and tried to beat me up, and one when my ex's boyfriend took it upon himself to come round to my house and start a fight, for which he was charged with assault but was lucky to get away with it (so we know what kind of person he is)).


Whilst sitting there watching him train I updated my Facebook status to 'Stuart is observing Ellesmere Port's peasant underclass release the frustration of their shit lives at Jake's Kung Fu class'. In hindsight, an outlandish statement, one to cause amusement to my fellow Facebookers and one that could get me beaten up, rueing my lack of self defence skills/toughness. Perhaps an element of truth to it but it's not something I'm going to get into now.