09/10/2026
Every Little Dragons class ends with a “Question of the Day.”
The difficulty of the question is entirely dependent upon how the previous 30 minutes went.
If they’ve worked hard and listened, they get something easy.
If they’ve spent the class making me question every decision that led me to working with four-to-six-year-olds, they might get:
“What can you do to be helpful before you go to bed tonight?”
Yesterday they were great, so I gave them an easy one.
“What’s your favorite holiday?”
Christmas.
Halloween.
Christmas.
One kid said Labor Day, which makes me slightly concerned about the amount of manual labor taking place in his household.
Then I got to Noah.
“A cruise!”
Okay.
Technically, a cruise is not a holiday.
Unless Noah secretly identifies as European. In which case, when he goes on holiday, he apparently prefers cruising.
I let it go.
Noah is six. He’s tiny, perpetually happy, and usually sitting approximately three inches closer to me than any reasonable interpretation of personal space would allow.
He also lost a tooth this weekend.
I believe in Canada.
Possibly New Jersey.
It’s difficult to maintain accurate records when 15 small children are simultaneously providing weekend updates.
He showed me the newly vacant spot in his mouth, which naturally prompted several other children to open their mouths and show me their dental situations.
This is my career.
Anyway, Noah is one member of a little five boy crew that has taken over my Wednesday Little Dragons class.
And they arrived completely by accident.
About six months ago, Ethan’s mom brought him in because she wanted him to build some confidence.
Ethan is an incredibly sweet kid with wonderful parents.
He is also shy.
As in, “I’m perfectly happy watching karate from over here, thankyouverymuch” shy.
His mom came up with a plan.
Ethan had four close friends from preschool. They had all since moved on to different elementary schools and didn’t get to see each other very often.
She figured she’d invite a couple of them to karate.
A couple somehow became four.
The theory was simple:
If Ethan saw his friends having fun out on the mat, surely he’d want to join them.
It was a good plan.
It failed spectacularly.
The first Wednesday they all arrived happened to be during one of the busiest transitions of our entire week.
We were trying to get about 20 beginner kids, plus their parents, grandparents, siblings and assorted belongings out of the building while approximately 20 Little Dragons and all of THEIR people were coming in.
Into the middle of this carefully controlled chaos came five former preschool best friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while.
They treated the lobby like their own private Romper Room.
Running.
Yelling.
Hugging.
Pure mayhem. Pure joy.
Then class started.
Four of them walked onto the mat…
…and suddenly became perfectly functional karate students.
Ethan sat stubbornly next to his mom.
Mom’s master plan had successfully gotten four children to try karate.
Unfortunately, none of them were Ethan.
She laughed.
She’s a smart mom.
Sometimes you lose the battle and play the long game.
Because now four of Ethan’s best friends were doing karate every Wednesday.
Eventually peer pressure would prevail.
Especially when some of that pressure comes from Noah’s little smiling face.
The other parents liked the class.
The kids liked the class.
So they signed up.
And Wednesday night karate accidentally became the weekly preschool reunion.
Eventually, Ethan joined them.
There wasn’t a dramatic breakthrough.
No inspirational music played.
As far as I remember, one Wednesday he simply walked onto the mat and did class.
Now all five train.
And over the last six months, something interesting has happened.
They’re still lunatics in the lobby.
More subdued lunatics, but lunatics nonetheless.
I give them some room to goon around because I know this may be the only time they see each other all week.
Then class starts.
And they’re becoming five of my best little students.
I usually separate them on the mat.
Not because I don’t trust them.
I just have decades of experience suggesting that five six-year-old best friends sitting directly beside each other is an unnecessary experiment.
In a big class, I can strategically place other children between them.
On smaller nights, I start running out of human buffers.
But yesterday I looked at the five of them sitting across the front of my class and realized something.
I’ve seen this before.
About 15 years ago, there was another group of five kids at Impact.
They weren’t best friends when they started.
They really only had one thing in common:
They lived in the same neighborhood.
Their parents figured out that instead of everyone driving to karate several nights a week, they could take turns.
So one parent would pull up in a minivan and five karate kids would pile out.
Eventually, whenever we saw them coming, we started calling them The Caravan.
The name stuck.
So did they.
Those five kids trained together for years.
White belt to black belt.
They started around eight or nine years old.
By twelve or thirteen, they had all earned their black belts together.
Eventually they grew up.
High school ended.
College happened.
Life happened.
The Caravan stopped pulling into the parking lot.
But for a few years, five kids who originally shared little more than a neighborhood and a convenient ride became a team.
And now, fifteen years later, I’m watching another group of five.
Except this time it’s backwards.
The Caravan became friends because they trained together.
These five are training together because they’re friends.
I have no idea where it goes from here.
They’re six.
Black belt is a very long way away.
Right now Noah apparently considers cruises a major holiday, and Luke believes the secret to winning a squat contest is throwing his entire body onto the floor.
Wesley may not need us at all. His entire family appears to already be ninjas. I’ve never actually seen them enter the dojo. They just materialize in the spectator chairs.
Jude is the ultimate wingman. Whether the group is working hard or considering some questionable hijinks, he’s enthusiastically on board.
And Ethan—the kid responsible for this whole crew being here in the first place—is finally out there with them.
We’ve got some time.
Maybe someday they’ll earn their black belts together.
Maybe they won’t.
But I have something their parents don’t have yet.
Perspective.
I’ve already watched five kids pile out of a minivan without realizing they were creating memories they’d still carry fifteen years later.
And now every Wednesday, I get to watch five more walk through the door.
They think they’re just excited to see their friends.
Maybe they are.
But I’ve seen this before. 🥋
