Lost in the Rain?

 In Columbia’s bridge program I and a few other classmates have been reading Lost in Place by Mark Salzmann. The story talks about how Mark grew up and some of the crazy people/ insane situations he had to deal with while growing up. But that is life right? It is so according to Salzmann. Salzmann tells a number of stories about his experiences growing up including when he discovered Kung Fu and Bruce Lee movies, his first girlfriend, being bullied, etc. Mark went through a lot when he was growing up in Ridgefield, Connecticut and decided to tell his story because he looks back on his trials and tribulation as funny and something people should read about. When Salzmann talks about his initial love of karate and how he begged his mom for Karate lessons he mentions his teacher, Sensei O’Keefe. H goes on to talk about the time when O’Keefe, Michael, and Salzmann went on a camping trip. I thought this was the funniest part of the book when I read it. I enjoyed this anecdote Salzmann put in.

Sensei O’Keefe was a very harsh, brutal, completely honest type of guy. He would pound on his students for not doing a technique right or verbally abuse his students consistently by calling them “candy ass” or “pussies”.  Mark would receive most not if all of this verbal abuse because of how small he was compare to the other students and that he was not the greatest fighter at school. When Mark introduced his friend Michael to Sensei O’Keefe and he began to take classes, Michael being the more vicious, aggressive type, quickly excelled in O’Keefe’s class and he did not like that one bit. The fact Michael was so successful made the verbal abuse towards Mark even worse. Shortly after Michael and Mark receive their green belts they go on a camping trip with Sensei and the other black belt Bill. Bill was going to give Michael and Mark a ride to the camp site so they packed their stuff in his car. Both being in their karate uniforms ended up riding with Sensei in his Porsche because Bill had some errands to run. Bill ended up not showing up for two days because of car trouble and Mark and Michael ended up sleeping outside most of the nights before sensei threw them his car keys. They were both smelly and needed showers and changes of clothes because they were wet. They tried to warm them up over a fire and ended up melting their shoes. Everyone even Sensei laughed at them. At the end of the trip Bill shows up in a rental and lets they know what happened. They changed clothes and were relieved they did not have to ride back with Sensei only to find out they could not listen to Black Sabbath in Bill’s car because it had to cassette player.For Michael!

I thought that anecdote that Salzmann put in their about the camping trip was really funny. I enjoyed that part of the book because I could only imagine the torture of what they had to go through with no dry clothes and a douchey Karate teacher who let prostitutes sleep in his tent before his own students and let them sleep in the rain for most of the night. I’d imagine that has to be the worst thing any teenager would go through. As I read later in the book that was not even the half of Mark’s troubles.