Here’s a little story from many years ago that’s been rattling around in my mind lately.
I’d been playing judo for about 12 years when I went to a new dojo for the first time. The sensei was one of the highest-ranking black belts in the area, IIRC a Korean shichidan. Maybe hachidan.
Now I had never re-dyed my belt and through many washings it had taken on a sort of nondescript, unidentifiable greyish color. The practice went as most practices do or at least did. First, everyone kneels on the edge of the mat, more or less in rank order. I positioned myself ahead of the white and brown belts, at the lowest position among black belts.
Then you warm up, calisthenics, then uchikomi (an exercise of repetitions in which you take a partner just to the point of unbalancing), maybe a short lesson, and then randori, free play, free sparring.
Well, during randori the sensei had me compete against each of his beginning students, the white belts, in turn, checking me out. I cleaned up on all of them. Then he had me compete against his brown belt students and I cleaned up on all of them. Then he had me compete against his more senior, black belt students. I defeated them one by one.
After I’d thrown his senior student, a sandan, on his ear, the senior student came up to me and whispered in my ear “What the heck rank are you, anyway?”
The sensei then sparred with me and, of course, he demolished me.
It was the beginning of a grand summer there.
