Memory is a very peculiar thing. It amazes me how some people have memories from a very early stage in their childhood, when they were just three or four years old. Apparently I fell downhill really badly when I was around two, at least that’s one of the stories my dad loves telling although I can’t recall it at all. It might be a matter of selective memory.
I do remember though playing as a lonely wild west cowgirl, like on those movies my grandpa used to watch. Back then, at the sweet age of seven, cowboys seemed to be free spirited travellers with really cool fighting skills. A year or two later Daniel Larusso came into my life and I learnt I could be a “Karate Kid”, a girl with even cooler fighting skills, no horse or pistols required.
At around the same time Goku and his friends invited me to follow their life quest searching for those magic “dragon balls”, what were those shiny stars in them though?
And even though pink was never my colour the popular “Power Rangers” showed my generation how girls could also fight.
We did many cool things throughout the eighties and nineties while growing up in Basque Country. Football was indeed a big thing in our lives and countless times in the absence of a real football we would just play “foot-tin” or “how many times you can kick a tin of soda before breaking it”. But certainly there wasn’t any karate, kung fu nor any crane’s kick. As you can see my martial dream back then was still locked inside my parents’ TV set.
It wasn’t till my university days that I discovered Wing Tsun lessons at a small gym in my neighbourhood. That was more than sixteen years ago, when not even the great Ip Man was famous in Europe. I knew absolutely nothing about kung fu and my Dragon Ball days were well gone by then; however, that little fire inside me had never gone away, that little cowgirl was still there wondering. It was pretty clear to me, I needed to try it out and so I did.
Finally, I managed to take my martial dream out of the telly. Joining that local gym was the very first step towards discovering myself. Who would have known back then?; you see? I think it doesn’t matter where or when, if you feel that little fire you should let it out.
I tell you this sixteen years after that first step, a fairly long and happy journey so far learning different skills and disciplines, still walking my path and discovering myself, still that curious little cowgirl, still no horse or pistols required.
– Saray
