Oh, How My Melting Popsicle Changed My Life

Everyday the sound of the Ice Cream mans truck would play that same old song "Ice Cream" by Andre Nickatina (essentially just "Turkey in the Straw" with bass).

It was about 104 degrees in the shade the day my mother finally decided that I was worth a popsicle from the Ice Cream Truck dude.

I was about 6 or seven years old at the time. The line to purchase my first orange popsicle was as long as some of the lines to sign up or resign up for Public Assistance.

After my purchase I had to run for my dear life. 3 members of the elementary Kolor Guard gang were waiting on me to rob me of my popsicle. Well that wasn’t going to happen. I don’t really know how fast I was running but I left all three of them in the dust. By the time I got back home the orange popsicle was melting all over my sticky fingers. I was so upset and angry that I cried all afternoon.

When my father returned home from work he hugged me and swore on getting us out of the hood one day.

Then he sat me on his strong lap and said that there are only a few self-defense systems taught to black children in this city. A lot of people believe that self-defense means going into Jackie Chan or Chuck Norris or Bruce Lee or Jim Kelly mode and fighting off bad guys with karate kicks to the groin and smashing heads together. That’s actually not true son.

While I’ll personally teach you some cool moves, self –defense is also about trusting your instincts, understanding your surroundings and doing everything possible to avoid putting yourself into harm’s way.

Self-defense is all about being smart. Young children like yourself while learning self-defense training don’t see the world with rose tinted glasses and that is a good thing.

You’ll need to be aware of the dangers lurking out there in the world and you’ll need to know what to do if approached by a stranger or little gang members.

The Martial arts I’ll will teach you is all about self-discipline that will provide you with a good exercise.

Son if you’re going to spend a few hours after school vegging out in front of the TV, because you’re afraid to go out, why not use that time constructively?

Self-defense will not only teach you invaluable life skills, but it will also give you confidence that you never had. When armed with practical knowledge and self-defense skills, people will think twice before challenging you about anything.

We’ll start training tomorrow after I get home from work.

My father never got the opportunity to teach me any self-defense because while we sat down to dinner a stray bullet struck him in the head where he died right on the spot in a bowl of Presidential Beef Noodle Soup.

It was a result of a gang related drive by shooting. The police never made any arrests. They also didn’t have any description of the shooter’s car or a motive.

Looking back on that time in my life I would always learn how to protect myself at all cost.

After my father’s untimely funeral I went on to study Taekwondo. A Korean martial art, characterized by its emphasis on head-height kicks, jumping spinning kicks and fast kicking techniques with kicks and striking being above waist height only.

I studied under the video tutorials of Servet Tazegül  a world, Olympic and European champion Turkish taekwondo practitioner of Azerbaijani origin competing in the featherweight division. He competed in the men's 68 kg class at the 2008 Summer Olympics held in Beijing, China and won the bronze medal. Tazegül qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics and went on to beat Iran's Mohammad Bagheri Motamed in the final, with a score of 6-5, winning the gold medal. After months of self-training I took on my first match and was knocked out in a record setting 3 seconds.

I knew it was time to go to a mojo fitness center.

Mojo Fitness combines great music with fitness-focused moves to get a total body workout. The energy of the class in combination with its interval style approach, alternating between strength building and cardio segments, is an effective and addictive way to get into shape and stay there.

Mojo’s was crazy fun and I was getting serious results: toned arms, tighter abs, a stronger heart and lungs. Mojo choreography is sequenced to boost metabolism. It takes the focus off learning complicated dance steps, which allows you to intensify your movements (torch more calories) and access more muscle groups (build more muscle) and have a blast doing it. The combination also trains your body to burn more calories while at rest not just when you’re exercising.

Mojo Fitness dance fitness training comes in all shapes, rhythms and exercise levels.

The professional fitness trainers encouraged me to pick and choose what moves that I was comfortable with (I quickly chose the Robot style of dancing also called mannequin, is an illusionary street dance style often confused with popping that attempts to imitate a dancing robot or mannequin. Doing the Robot gained fame after Michael Jackson used the dance when he performed "Dancing Machine" with his brothers and later performed the dance during his solo career in songs such as "Smooth Criminal") and go at my own slow motion speed.

Well to make a long story short I’ll tell you by the time I graduated from high school no one dared to bother me especially after I appeared on the TV show So You Think You Can Dance Show.  Where contestants perform a particular style of dance each week with a partner. The audience votes on their favorite couple leaving the 3 couples with the least votes up for elimination. After each dancer performs a solo of their choice for the judges, one male and one female contestant are up for elimination. After making it through each of the weeks, I made it to the top three with fellow dancers Pepe LA pew who placed third and Mickey Mouse who placed as the runner-up.

By winning the show I got to be featured in and on the cover of Dance Spirit Magazine, taking home $250,000 and I got to be the first dancer to be a Gatorade Athlete and go on tour.  

After the show, I went on to receive a BA degree in Psychology at USC, University.

I still continue to dance and produce my own choreography.  I’m also a faculty member of the traveling dance convention Excel in Motion.

All the achievement, success and accolades all because my orange popsicle started melting right before my very eyes that one hot summer day.