The Oranization PT. III: The Transitional Cycle

The Organization PT. III: The Transitional Cycle

Now, its not that I did not like my Kenpo classes. After a year and a half I had attained an orange belt ( the first level of progression at the time) and was well on my way to purple. After having a new instructor nearly every other week for months 6-12, I now had a pretty cool instructor in a guy called Mr. Priest. Mr. Priest, I am guessing was probably in his mid-twenties, although at 16 everyone over 19 is pretty much just an adult, and there is really not much difference. But anyway, I had had about 5 months worth of lessons with Mr. Priest, and I saw him pound a couple people in sparring class over that span, so I was happy.
Like I said, it was not like I did not like Karate, I simply had other things I would rather do, like ditch school , skip karate and go see girls. Me and a couple friends had concocted a scam one morning to drive across town and spend some quality time hanging with these girls that we had met a couple of weeks ago cruising Speedway (yes cruising Speedway, you did it too so don’t laugh). We had a couple minor obstacles. First off we had school, and parents for that matter, and I had Karate later that evening. School was easy, in those days it was not hard to get over on the attendance process at a public school in Tucson, Arizona. The parents were not that hard either. All we had to tell them was that we were going to go do other stuff after school and we were set. The Karate thing, now this was a little harder needle to thread. If I wanted to stretch out my fun day as far as possible, I would have to find a way out of Karate. For anyone who has never been involved with Martial Arts instructors, let me fill you in on a couple things. First off, like most people, they do not like to get lied to. The difference between them and most normal people was the ever present threat of physical violence, or some other manner of pain like excessive push-ups or bag work. One way or another if you bruised these people's strangely fragile egos by lying to them, they would make you pay.
So there I am, standing in Austin’s living room staring at the phone, and waiting for the clock to turn to 10:30. Karate school opening time in those days. I took a deep breath, brushed up my story and made the call.
“American Kenpo Karate, how may I help you?”
Unfamiliar voice.
“ Uh, yeah this is Vincent Salvatore, I have a lesson tonight….”
I laid it all out for this mystery stranger. The illness, the staying home from school, and the regret at missing class. Oh, the regret!
“Okay, well thanks for the call Vincent.”
It had worked, I was set.

Now the strange thing about this plot, is that to this day, I cant even remember what this girls name was, the one that I was going to go see. I mention this because of the lengths I went to see a girl that I do not even hold in enough of a nostalgic regard to even recall her name. What I do remember is that she lived far.
If you have never been to Tucson, Arizona, it is likely as big area wise, as some major eastern cities with 4 or 5 times the population, and it has virtually no useful system of freeways. In New Jersey, where I was originally from, you could probably drive from Jersey to Delaware, by way of Philadelphia in the time it took me to drive to this girls house, never leaving the Tucson metropolitan area.

The details of the days events are really in no way pertinent to this tale so we will skip them, the long and short of it is that I timed my return home for about 8:30, the time I would normally get home from my lesson if I had stayed for sparring class. To make the illusion complete I changed into my Gi (karate suit to the lay person), sprizted my face with water to appear as though I had been sweating, and concocted a story about how tough class had been and that I wouldn’t be surprised if I had a black eye in the morning. It all went pretty well, until I got home from school the next day.
Now, normally I got home before my parents did, and I can’t remember why this day I did not. But I got home to find my mother waiting for me with the “You F’ed up” look that all women but especially mothers can pull up on command, on her face.
“I got an interesting phone call when I got home today.”
“Oh?”, I answered, knowing that “interesting” probably meant “condemning” or “fatal”.
“Mr. DeMarco from the karate school called, “
“Mr. DeMarco?” I thought…”I don’t even know who that is.”
“He wanted to know when you wanted to reschedule the lesson you missed yesterday when you were sick. I think we need to talk.”
Mr. DeMarco: The stranger on the phone.
Mental note: Add subversive social sabotage to the list of things karate teachers do to you when you lie to them.

I had to find out who this "Mr. DeMarco" was, and why he needed to ruin my life. I would soon find out that it did not matter.