An Open Letter To The 9 Year Old I Saw Practicing Karate In Line At McDonald’s
Dear Child,
First of all, don’t listen to your Dad. You’re not bothering anyone. You are exactly as you should be. There is no better use of your time than to be practicing high kicks at the plastic Hamburglar toy display in the corner. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. They’re wrong. They’re all wrong.
All of them.
Little kid — what your Dad, the people in the McDonald’s breakfast line, and society at large all fail to understand is that there are threats in this world that can be perceived by you alone, and destroyed solely by the arcane knowledge of martial arts that you possess.
What you have is great. What you have is rare. What you have is something you should be violently defending. Preferably with karate.
If there is something amiss in the world, it is not that you were loudly shouting “hi-ya!” while windmill-style chopping at the french fry-scented air. It’s that your dad chose to wake up this morning and take you to this fast food restaurant of all places, and not — say — some ancient order of monks where you might train unimpeded until the day finally comes in which your karate is super-humanly powerful enough to save us all from this evil world we have created.
Small boy, I think we can all agree this world needs saving.
I know there’s a lot of talk out there about how we should be putting our faith in *science* and not *individuals* to save our species from the perils of war, climate change, global pandemic, crumbling democracy, etc, but in a way I am putting my faith in science. I am putting my faith in statistical science. I am betting that in all of the 7.753 billion human beings on Earth, there is at least one of us with the near transcendental ability to snatch us back from certain doom.
Excitable juvenile whom I recently watched cartwheel across the disgusting, ketchup smeared floor of my local McDonald’s — I believe this person could be you.
Governments across the globe have tried every sort of adult, and every sort of adult solution to the problems we face. These solutions have ranged from logic, compromise, and democracy to war, exploitation, and authoritarianism. You could argue that these solutions have netted a wide breadth of results, but here we are, nevertheless, in the grips of world-wide catastrophe. All our powers of imagination, and still we have failed to avert our course. But you know what we haven’t tried?
Free-form. Improv. Karate.
And that’s where you come in, little boy I watched attempt to spin-kick in the parking lot and accidentally drop his Egg McMuffin.
There is a nobility in the way you pump your pudgy fists in all directions. There is a purity in the way you jump a full inch and a half off the ground as you strike your knee in the direction of the closed-until-further-notice ball pit.
Teach us your ways. Teach us to see the world through your eyes. Show us a reality in which our invisible enemies become visible at last, that we might strike them down with a swift flying kick to the throat! Or wherever your little foot reaches.
I believe the powers you possess are next to mystic. I believe you possess a force that is older than the trees. I believe that someday you will put down that promotional Minecraft toy and take up the helm of humanity. For all our sake.
Either that, or I have eaten too much McDonald’s and the build up of chemical preservatives and micro-plastic has irreversibly damaged my brain.
But I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. This is the chemically imbalanced, toxic, dying, attention deficient, stupid, repetitive, relentless, repetitive world we live in. And if I am crazy, well, I am just a reflection of my environment.
But you? Curly haired boy in a white karate robe? Mustard dripping from your mouth as you jab at your Dad’s soft midriff? You cut straight through this crazy world like a samurai sword through fryer grease. Don’t ever lose that. Don’t ever forget. We need you buddy.
We need you now more than ever.
Sweep the leg.
Wax on, wax off.
There is no spoon.
I’m lovin’ it.
-№ 27 (Hash brown w/small coffee)
