Me Teaching Children?

In general, I avoid children. I find most of them to be poorly raised, over-medicated, messy, and rather silly. So how odd is it that I actually enjoyed teaching children in hapkido class today? Very odd, I say, but there you have it!

How did this happen? Well, in short, I was ambushed. I went to hapkido class and out of the blue the black belt who was leading the class turned to me and said: "Get a target and train the white belts on kicks." I was stunned! I'd never been asked to do something like that before, and I had figured I was a few belts away from that. But of course you don't don't say no when a senior belt asks you to do something like that. So off I went. Next thing I know I was ordering the white belts (a group predominantly composed of five or six kids under the age of ten) to line up and telling them what kicks to do.

And you know what? It was a lot of fun...and very rewarding! I suddenly had this weird nurturing/protective feeling come over me. I wanted them to learn, get better, have fun, and feel good about themselves. Not that I goofed off; I did correct them if they needed it. But I cracked jokes to make them laugh and heard myself saying all sorts of encouraging things to them, and they responded with this very happy glow that only children can give off. (I cannot believe I'm writing this, by the way).

How strange and unexpected. I never thought this was something I could do even remotely well, and the fact that I did it and actually enjoyed it is just a total shock to me.