Karate + Disability= Divergent Thinking.
When I was 5 years old, I was enrolled in Karate Class. Still I’m not really sure as of why, but I learned a little something about the world there. Having a disability, like erbs palsy, can be quite confusing for a child. You’re told you have a disability, but no one but you can actually figure out what you physically can and can’t do. Everyone says your different but not different enough that you’re really different?!?! In my karate classes we had daily exercise’s, such as push-ups. Well my left arm being shorter than my right made push-ups a challenge. My instructor saw my difficulty and presented two other ways I could do push-ups. One was me crossing my arms on the ground and pushing up, the other was one handed push-ups. I switched it up back and forth and one day a kid said I was doing it wrong. He said “Those aren’t push-ups.” I said “These are the push-ups I was told to do.” The kid replied “But it’s different so it’s wrong.” I then at the age of five concluded that there must be countless ways to do things that no one knows about and that I would rather find new ways and be called “Wrong” Then never even try.