2006 Tech Taido 10th Anniversary

Ten years isn’t an espe­cially long time. It’s about long enough for a mere two bil­lion tons of sed­i­ment to be eroded from the Grand Canyon — widen­ing it just a few inches. Ten years ago, the inter­net was “new” (to most folks), mobile phones were exor­bi­tant, and I knew every­thing there was worth know­ing. At least some things never change.

Also ten years ago, Bryan fin­ished high school and enrolled at Georgia Tech. As a result of my con­tin­u­ing need to be in charge of some­thing, I conned him into help­ing me start a Taido class. Originally just an excuse to grat­ify my frag­ile ego, the class began to look more and more like a legit­i­mate mar­tial arts club when we came to notice cer­tain stu­dents actu­ally attempt­ing to learn what Taido was all about. Some of those stu­dents are still with us.

Last night, many cur­rent stu­dents and a few has-beens came together to cel­e­brate ten con­tin­u­ous years of Taido at Tech. We ate the famous Fossett BBQ (you can’t beat Buddy’s meat), drank the famous Guinness milk­shakes, and had a famously good time hang­ing out and act­ing like fam­ily. There was some light speech-making and a cou­ple of minor pre­sen­ta­tions, but this was not a “big event” kind of party — it was more of an excuse to say thank you to the peo­ple who have helped us keep this thing going just long enough to not look like a bunch of jack­asses. It was also an excuse to grat­ify my frag­ile ego.

It was great see­ing so many friends in one night. Kirk, Dee, and Edge showed. So did Mary and Liz. Mitsuaki, Brendan, and D-mag were able to come by, and so did a few other folks from the honbu dojo. We had a nice turnout, with new and old stu­dents (and their sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers) all drink­ing, jok­ing, and watch­ing old Taido videos together.

I did find myself miss­ing a few folks who were unable to be there, par­tic­u­larly our “California branch” — Chris, Anthony, and Joshua. Uchida Sensei was unable to attend, though he did send along some very good sake. Chad was totally going to make it, like for real, but can’t exactly remem­ber not know­ing how he actu­ally came to be unsure about why he wasn’t there. Oh well, I drank enough for all of them.

Of course, the nat­ural instinct upon the demar­ca­tion of a period of time as a sig­nif­i­cant event is to spec­u­late on the future. That is, assum­ing that every­one finally gets tired of rehash­ing, rem­i­nisc­ing, retelling, and rewrit­ing the past. And so Bryan and I spec­u­lated, but didn’t make any announce­ments about our plan for world dom­i­na­tion. Instead we gave those who inquired our own ver­sion of that famous, one-word advice about the future from “The Graduate” — and if you weren’t there, you missed it. But it was good. Really. Don’t you feel left out now?