A Temporary Truce ?

I'm not sure if I really want to formally announce this yet. Some of you would be all too happy.

Since moving to Colorado, I have had several Wal-Mart experiences.

Pleasant Wal-Mart experiences.

Keeping in mind we've barely been here a month, I'm going to declare a 'temporary truce' with my pure ,soul-deep, loathing for Wal-Mart.

Seriously, "pleasant" to the point that I mentioned how "painless" the first trip was to Daughter.
Daughter's reply? "Yeah, Mom, WOW! you didn't even get mad once !"

And, they had everything on our list.

The employees, they smiled.

On one of our trips, we were moseying our way to the exit, and from the corner of my eye, I see 3 little boys, about 4 years old. they are all wearing white karate uniforms. (similar to one my son wore in Tn.) I pointed them out to Son, and realized the boys were gathered outside of a dojo.

In Wal-Mart.

A dojo in Wal-Mart.

A WHAT, WHERE ???

No way. Funny, we were looking for one of those !

Still in "wary of Wal-Mart" mode, we walked over and looked at the information table.
Daily classes available for all ages.
different styles of classes
professional instructors.

The dojo itself was small-ish, as would be expected for a Wal-Mart side store.
It appeared to be well-equipped.

One of the instructors came out and introduced himself ( I am proud to say my children did bow) .
He started to give us the run-down of information we'd just read.
So I started firing questions at him.

"what styles?" The form they use is basic defense moves. blocks, kicks, punches.
"How many instructors for each class?" depending on the size of the group, one or two.(which tells me they can only have up to 10-12 in each group of kids)

"would my kids have to 'test in' to keep thier current training ranks? "

Now , he's eyeballing me.
"oh what ranks?"
She's pre-test orange, he's pretest yellow.
"OH ! What did they take?"
Ken-po.
"wow. yes they can keep thier ranks, we work with them on the levels they are on. "

"hmmm. And how aggressive is it? do they work together or just with instructors?"

Baffled.

" Do the kids spar each other?"

"um, no, they don't."

me, "oh, so do you do any contact training?"

"The contact..... well, no , they use the dummies."

At this point I want to giggle, but I hold onto it, becasue this is going to be priceless.

so I look the baffled man right in the face and explain to him, " My kids have had almost 4 years of aggressive Ken-po training. Full contact with instructors and classmates. I think I'd be afraid to enroll them here."

"full.... full contact?" he looks at me like I have 3 heads, then studies the children carefully.

"yes, full contact. My daughter learned how to flip her instructor before we moved. They trained everything from sparring to breaking boards. "

"uuum, no we aren't near that aggressive here."

We scared him. He DID offer the free tryout class, and we thanked him for it.

As we left I had to tell my kids that wasn't the place. Because they'd hurt that man.

Most Wal-Marts have vision centers, movie rentals, a bank.

Ours has an everloving dojo.

When we have more time to 'browse' , I only wonder at what else we may find.

Which is why the truce is a temporary thing.