It was Saturday, and I was standing in the back of the room, wiggling my toes and wondering if I should switch to orange nail polish since pink is so pink. Someone walked over and parked his feet in front of mine. I knew the feet were a man’s because the toes were long and kind of hairy.
I looked up.
“You must be my new student,” the man said. “Welcome. I am Master Kim.” He put out his hand.
Master Kim was around my dad’s age. He wasn’t short or super tall; but his shoulders were wide, and he had big hands that looked like they could crush a brick. His eyes were dark, and he had a long, black ponytail. His uniform was white and crisp. But his belt was frayed and more gray than black. I wondered why he didn’t just get a new one.
I opened my mouth to reply, but then I noticed a boy with an orange belt standing several feet behind Master Kim. He was pointing at Master Kim and bowing. I ignored it because of the try-to-focus speech Dad had given me on the ride over.
I looked Master Kim in the eye. This is a trick Mom taught me to do when I needed to give someone my full attention.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Eliza Bing,” I said, shaking his hand. (In my head, I added, Bing. Like the cherry.)
“And you, as well, Eliza,” Master Kim said. “Please ask your father to find me after class so we can arrange to get you a dobok and a belt.”
I figured dobok meant “uniform.” But I didn’t know how Master Kim knew my dad was the person who brought me. I nodded anyway. It’s the polite thing to do, after all.
Master Kim leaned in closer. “By the way,” he said, “what the young man behind me is trying to tell you is that it is proper martial-arts etiquette to bow whenever you greet a black belt.”
My brain screeched to a halt.
How did Master Kim know what the boy behind him was doing? Did taekwondo masters have some kind of super-ninja power?
“A good martial artist is always aware of his or her environment,” Master Kim said.
Speechless, I nodded like a bobble-head. Master Kim turned and strode to the front of the class. He seemed to fill up the whole room.
“Jong yul!” he called. “Class, line up!”
There were about twenty students, and they began to move themselves around like they were setting up an invisible chessboard. I don’t know if the class was really “ages seven to seventeen” like the brochure said, but Sam was right. It was mostly kids my age or younger. Some of the students had orange or yellow or gold belts tied around their waists. They lined up in the front of the class. Almost everyone else had on white belts. They stood in the back rows. There were two teenagers wearing black belts. They stood behind everyone else. One of them, the girl, smiled at me and pointed to an open spot on the carpet.
I hurried to where she was motioning and stood at attention, proud I’d done it so quickly. It wasn’t until I was there for a few seconds that I remembered the rule about bowing to black belts.