I always loved my natural skill for back flips, and my knack for kicking people's hats off without even messing up their hair. Of course, I cannot do that last trick now, because people have become paranoid about getting the backs of their heads sun burnt, so they wear their hats backwards. (I know that must he the reason. I refuse to believe it is just a fashion fad, because that would be the most moronic thing I've ever seen, and people aren't that stupid. Are they?)

But I digress. I had these great natural skills that I loved, and they looked good in photographs. I could even have a baseball bat broken on my right shin (a practice I stopped when a kid used an aluminum one and turned my tibia into a back scratcher), and a two-by-four broken over my stomach, while I made funny faces, grunted, and tightened my butt. Oh, no one could tighten a butt like I could! You could have opened an old Coca-Cola bottle with it! And even drink it after if I just had a shower. Ah, those were the days of pride and achievement!

But after one week of ippon dori, my sphincters lost their luster. I would tighten my butt, but my heart wasn't in it. I even asked a friend to break another two-by-four on my stomach for old time's sake, but when he missed and hit me too low, I had an out of body experience, where I saw my past life as a eunuch in ancient Mesopotamia. I realized I did not enjoy doing this as much as before. And that night, as I watched the moon, hanging low like a swollen testicle, I cried out loud, and sobbed, wondering how come I, who could do full splits between two chairs could make a fool of myself when trying such a simple looking technique as ippon dori.

I hated that technique!

I practiced it again and again. Every time, thinking how much I hated that stupid technique and wondering why I bothered with it. And again and again, failed. I heard the Japanese say something like. "Aa, yada" when things didn't go well. Someone told me it means "rats", or "darn it", sort of. For me, it was "O no!" That all-meaning, all-purpose almighty expression of the Spanish vernacular that could perhaps he more familiar to English-speaking readers if I translated it as "aw, f***!" But I won't, because there's nothing more glorious to a Hispanic than a well-sounding "C*no" after one has tried ippon dori five hundred times with Aunt Carmelina and every time her massive forty pound arm had crushed me again and again. I thought it might have been that the bushels of black hair in her armpit was throwing me off, but even after I asked her to shave, it still happened. I now wish that had not asked her, because when seeing her with one shaved armpit and one hairy one, people would walk up to her to pat the cute little hamster they thought she was carrying under her left arm, and then she would attack me with a heavy shomenuchi and a threateningly stubbly armpit.

I missed the old days when my life was just jumping up and breaking hanging boards with a spinning back kick, or smashing, blocks of ice with my forehead. (I did not have much use for my short term memory anyway.) I was the king of the show-offs, and had the material to do it. Now my whole vocabulary was reduced to one word - C*no!

But then it happened! Oh, happy day! I not only could do ippon dori acceptably, but I enjoyed doing it. Happy as a clam, I went to visit Aunt Carmelina, to give her the good news. However, when I got there, she was not happy. Her hair had grown hack in her right armpit, but for some reason. it was white. It was quite an unsettling sight. It looked like someone had stabbed her with a panda, and left it there. And you know what's good about a great word like C*no? You can also use it to express surprise, or when you are being chased by an enormous woman with bicolored armpit hair.

My large arsenal of useless skills is gone now. I am not popular at parties anymore (although my Aunt Carmelina is). But I'm happy with my ippon dori. I'm always working at it, as you all should he too. And for that time in training when nothing seems to work, remember the best word ever invented. Use it! It works! Verily. verily I tell you. If I could rename ippon dori, I would certainly call it - C*no!

On a serious note: To offer an apology assumes not only that we recognize that we have done something wrong, but that an apology would suffice to make up for our wrong-doing. Hence I feel rather foolish offering an apology when I realize that what I deserve has nothing to do with words, unless they are printed on the end of a plumber's snake and are shoved down my nostrils until they reach my colon.

Indiscretion is the product of stupidity, and this time I can't blame it on alcohol abuse, which is but another form of stupidity, and I won't continue on the topic because it may sound like bragging. Regardless, for what it's worth, I apologize for all the trouble I may have caused. Seriously and sincerely. And if I ever visit Canada, I'll be sure to bring with me a plumber's snake.