The Code of Chivalry for Knights of the Middle Ages
• To fear God and maintain His Church
• To serve the liege lord in valor and faith
• To protect the weak and defenseless
• To give succor to widows and orphans
• To refrain from the wanton giving of offence
• To live by honor and for glory
• To despise pecuniary reward
• To fight for the welfare of all
• To obey those placed in authority
• To guard the honor of fellow knights
• To eschew unfairness, meanness, and deceit
• To keep faith
• At all times to speak the truth
• To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun
• To respect the honor of women
• Never to refuse a challenge from an equal
• Never to turn the back upon a foe
These things were super cool. I knew I had to start thinking about what Uncle Jake said: making a Warrior Code of my own. I started thinking about what it would say and what it would mean to live by a code like this.
CHAPTER 8: A GIFT OF STRENGTH
This morning, I got up when my alarm clock went off at my new usual time, which Uncle Jake calls “zero-dark-thirty.” Of course, Uncle Jake wasn’t in the room. He was already out somewhere doing some kind of exercise. I’ve begun to think that maybe Uncle Jake doesn’t sleep at all. I never see him go to bed at night; I never see him get up in the morning. His bed is always made. So I wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t in the room. But what happened next did surprise me.
“Get up!” Uncle Jake shouted as he burst into the room.
“I am up!” I told him.
“Come on, then! I got you a present.”
“A present?” I already knew not to expect anything normal. In fact, I pretty much expected something painful.
“Yeah … a little something for you. Come on!”
I put on my shorts, shirt, and running shoes, and followed Uncle Jake downstairs.
“It’s in the garage…,” said Uncle Jake as we headed out the door and through the backyard toward the garage. I wondered what in the world he could have in there. A new bike maybe? A go-kart? No, I knew this would be something more, should I say, “practical.”
He opened the door to the garage and I walked in. I looked around. Nothing.
“What?” I asked him.
“What?” he replied.
“What is it?” I asked, still not seeing anything new in the garage.
“Look up,” said Uncle Jake with a big smile on his face.
Slowly, I began to look up, with no idea what to expect. Then I saw it, staring back at me. A pull-up bar.
“What do you think?” Uncle Jake asked me.
It was a crazy-looking—and kind of scary—thick metal bar bolted onto two heavy-duty pieces of wood.
“I made it last night, while you were sleeping.”
I guess I should have been happy. Or thankful. But I was SCARED and NERVOUS and EMBARRASSED because I already knew that I couldn’t do a single pull-up! And now here I was with Uncle Jake about to see exactly how weak I really was!!
As I stood there thinking all these horrible thoughts, Uncle Jake jumped up and did twenty-five pull-ups—like it was nothing. “This is a good bar,” he told me. “Give it a try. Here.” He had built a little box for me to step on so I could reach the pull-up bar. He pushed the box under the bar and said, “Step on up, and let’s see what you’ve got.”
It seemed like a YEAR PASSED as I stepped up onto the box and slowly reached toward the pull-up bar. I grabbed ahold of it. It was much thicker than the pull-up bar at school, which made it even harder to hold on to. And then, just like the last day of school, I pulled as hard as I could … but nothing happened. I tried again and even grunted a little to try to prove to Uncle Jake that I was really trying. But the grunting didn’t do much. Uncle Jake stood there and watched. After a few more seconds, I lost my grip and slipped off the bar.
“Sorry, Uncle Jake,” I told him, embarrassed at my strength—or should I say COMPLETE LACK OF STRENGTH.
“Don’t be sorry,” he replied. “Sorry won’t get you stronger. Now here is what we are going to do.…” He took another box he had made, which was taller than the first one, and put it under the bar. “Step up on this box, grab the bar, and then jump up until your chin is over the bar. Then I want you to hold yourself up there as long as you can, and when you can’t hold it any longer, come down as slowly as you possibly can.”
I followed his instructions. I grabbed the bar, jumped up, and got my chin over the bar. I held myself up for a few seconds, and then, when I couldn’t stay up any longer, I came down as slowly as I could.
As soon as I got to the bottom and my feet touched the box, Uncle Jake sounded off, “Now do it again!” I did. The next time, my muscles were already tired, so I couldn’t hold myself up as long, and I came down faster. “Again!” Uncle Jake yelled again. I did it again. And again. And again. Finally, when I could barely get myself up over the bar and basically dropped right down again, Uncle Jake said, “Okay. Now take a break. When I joined the Navy, I could barely do seven pull-ups. But the Navy gave me a program, and I stuck with it—I still do it today. Now I can do about fifty of them pretty easily. You wanna know how you get good at doing pull-ups?”
“How?”
“By doing pull-ups! And by the time the summer is over, you will be doing at least ten pull-ups. Ten pull-ups, in a row, by the time you go back to school. How do you think that sounds?”
I was thrilled. I was going to be able to do ten pull-ups! I wouldn’t be the laughingstock of gym class anymore! “I think that sounds AWESOME!” I told him.
“Well, remember, those pull-ups aren’t going to happen by themselves. You are going to have to earn them, with hard work and dedication—understand?”
“I understand.” And I did understand—this was going to be hard work—but it was going to be worth it.
“All right, next set!” Uncle Jake barked. I stepped back up on the box, grabbed the pull-up bar, jumped up, and started all over again, on my path to ten straight pull-ups.
CHAPTER 9: THE EIGHTS
I learned a lot today. The first thing I learned was about “knowledge.” See, so far, most of what Uncle Jake has taught me about being a warrior has been exactly what you think being a warrior is. Like being strong and knowing how to fight. Everyone knows a warrior has to do those things. DUH!
But what a lot of people don’t know, and I know I sure didn’t, was that a warrior has to be SMART. Uncle Jake told me about all the things you have to know when you are a soldier. Things like this:
1. One gallon of water weighs 8.35 pounds, and the average person needs at least one half gallon a day to survive. Soldiers have to know that so they know how much water to take on missions. COOL!
2. Warriors must know how to read a map so they know where they are and how to get where they are going. Did you know in the military they don’t use feet or yards or miles to measure things? Instead they use something called a “click,” which stands for “kilometer.” It is a little bit shorter than a mile and is made up of 1,000 meters, which are a little bit longer than a yard.
3. Warriors need to know A LOT of stuff about electronics. Like how to work satellite radios. Did you know the satellites that a radio uses to talk are in “geosynchronous” orbit around the earth? That means they are 22,000 nautical miles (which is like a regular mile, but a little bit longer) above the earth, and they stay at that same spot above the earth the whole time. WOW! That even sounds smart!
4. Warriors have to know history so they can learn what worked in past battles and what didn’t. Did you know that it is always better to be on higher ground than your enemy? TRUE!
5. Warriors have to learn o
ther languages so they can talk to people in other countries they travel to. Did you know hujambo means “hello” in Swahili—the language they speak in Kenya and some other parts of Africa? Wicked cool!
6. Finally, and most important, a warrior’s best weapon is the mind. They have to use their minds to figure out how to beat the enemy: How to catch them off guard. How to attack where the enemy is weak. How to OUTSMART the enemy. You can’t do that if you aren’t SMART!
Warriors have to be smart, which means they have to learn a lot. UH-OH! I know what you are thinking! I already told you that I’m not smart. Like I said, I had a HORRIBLE year in school. I don’t even know my times tables yet!
But wait! I learned something else today—something very important: I learned how to learn. When I told Uncle Jake I wasn’t smart, he laughed. He told me he didn’t do well in school, either, when he was a kid. School just didn’t seem important to him then. But when he got in the Navy, he realized he HAD TO LEARN a bunch of stuff. Luckily, one of his boot camp instructors taught him how to learn.
Uncle Jake asked me which number was the hardest to learn the times table for. For me it was the eights. There is no pattern or anything to them. They are just crazy. Crazy eights.
Uncle Jake went to my mom’s desk and brought back some three-by-five index cards. He told me I was going to make flash cards. I told him I already had flash cards that they gave me in school. He said that those didn’t work. I had to MAKE them.
So I started, writing the problem on one side and the answer on the other. 1 × 8 = 8. 2 × 8 = 16. 3 × 8 = 24. 4 × 8 = 32. 5 × 8 = 40, all the way up to 13 × 8. I told him we didn’t have to know 8 × 13. He told me he didn’t care! I didn’t even know what 8 × 13 was AT ALL. He told me to figure it out. So I added thirteen eights until I got 104. Then he made me make the flash cards over again, but with the 8 first. 8 × 1 = 8. 8 × 2 = 16. All the way to 8 × 13 = 104. And when I got to 8 × 13, I remembered it was 104. Wait! I think I LEARNED it.
When I was done, Uncle Jake picked up the pile, shuffled the cards, and started holding them up in front of me, testing me one at a time. If it was an easy one that I got right, he would put it on the bottom of the deck. If it was a hard one that I didn’t know, he made me figure it out by adding eights and then put that card only a few cards deeper in the pile so I would see it again soon. The next time I saw that card, like 8 × 7, I would remember a little better that it was 56. He would then put it a little deeper in the deck.
Eventually, when I REALLY KNEW the card and answered it as soon as I saw it, he would put it in a separate pile on the desk. That meant I knew it.
After about fifteen minutes, every card was in the “I knew it” pile.
Then Uncle Jake picked it up and went through the whole deck again. I only missed 8 × 6 and 8 × 12. He put them back into the deck and the next time I remembered them. 8 × 6 = 48 and 8 × 12 = 96. Every other card was in the “I knew it” pile.
He then picked up the “I knew it” pile and went through it again. I GOT THEM ALL RIGHT. EVERY SINGLE ONE.
“See!” Uncle Jake said. “You’re not DUMB. You just need to APPLY yourself.”
“What does that mean?” I asked him.
“It means work hard. Focus. Give one hundred percent. You see, no one is BORN knowing the times tables—or anything else! You have to LEARN and you have to learn EVERYTHING. That means you have to actually study and work until you know. Of course, this will be easier for some people than others.”
He then explained to me that every person has stuff that they are good at and stuff they are not. Some kids can learn more easily. Some kids can run faster. Some kids can do more pull-ups. Some people are even naturally good at everything. He also told me that I was naturally good at drawing. He has seen some of my artwork from school and other drawings I made around the house. He asked me if I practiced a lot to get good at art, and when I told him no, he said I was a natural. Then he told me that just about anybody can be good at just about anything—if they work hard.
He was right. Here I was, ten years old, and I had never actually focused on learning the times tables. I just thought I should know them like my friend Joshua. He seemed to know them as soon as he saw them. I thought I should be the same way. But that isn’t the way it works. You have to apply yourself and work hard to learn things.
And that’s the last thing I learned today. I’m not dumb. I’m actually pretty smart. I learned the eights 100 percent in about twenty minutes. I just need to work hard.
CHAPTER 10: JIU-JITSU
Today Uncle Jake took me to my first jiu-jitsu class. It was at a place called Victory MMA. If you don’t know what MMA is, it’s mixed martial arts. And if you don’t know what that is, it’s when the people on TV go into a cage and fight each other. I couldn’t believe what I was getting into! I figured I was a DEAD MAN.
When we walked into Victory MMA, it looked pretty cool but also PRETTY SCARY! There were punching bags hanging everywhere and two boxing rings and a real fighting cage like the ones on TV.
And then upstairs a bunch of mats on the ground. In fact, the whole floor was a giant mat. Even the walls had mats on them! Awesome! There were about fifteen kids in the jiu-jitsu class Uncle Jake had picked out for me. They didn’t look too tough. They were all different sizes, some bigger than me, some smaller than me. The instructor didn’t look like I thought he would. He wasn’t a big superhero-looking guy. In fact, he was not very tall and just looked like a normal man. He called me out on the mat.
“Get out here, kid!” he said in the kind of voice that makes you think you better listen.
Uncle Jake was doing some paperwork, so I figured I might as well get out there. I took one step onto the mat and—“STOP!” he yelled at me. “Take off your shoes, kid! No shoes on the mat!”
I sat down on the bench and took off my shoes. I walked out on the mat. “Everyone line up!” the instructor said in a stern voice.
“Takedown time. Winner stays, losers out. Two pairs, get started.”
Two pairs of kids walked out onto the mat. The rest of us stayed lined up on the wall. The coach shouted, “Go!” and the two pairs of kids slapped hands and then started fighting. But they weren’t punching each other. They were gripping each other’s arms, grabbing wrists, pushing heads, and then, suddenly, one would shoot in, grab the other kid’s legs, and slam him to the mat. I figured out quickly that was a “takedown.” Whoever got taken down had to go to the end of the line. The kid that took the other kid down got to stay in and go against the next kid in line.
Soon it was my turn, and I was pretty nervous. But I was going against a kid that was smaller than me. I thought I could definitely take him down. I walked over and held out my hand to the other kid. We shook hands. He said his name was Thor. I said, “Really?” He said yes. “That’s your real name?” I asked him again. He said yes, again. His actual name was THOR! I told him my name was Marc. Now that we were face-to-face, he was even smaller than I thought and definitely smaller than THOR from the comic book. He asked if I was ready. I said yes, and then we slapped hands and started to fight. Before I knew it, he put his hand in my face, which kind of startled me and made me blink. In the split second that my eyes were closed from the blink, Thor was underneath me, grabbing my legs and launching me into the air. It took him about one second to slam me into the mat. And he was smaller than me!
I got to the end of the line. The next kid I went with was bigger than me. We slapped hands, and this time I kept my hands up by my head to keep him away from my face. He grabbed my wrist and started to pull it down toward the ground. When I tried to pull it back up, he let go and dove at my legs. BOOM! I was on the ground again!
The next round, Uncle Jake was watching. I got slammed again. And again. And again. By big kids and little kids and kids the same size as me. And even though it was tough and I didn’t like losing, it was also AWESOME. These kids knew how to fight. They knew how to win. Even King Kenny would get slammed by these
kids. And it’s not because they are big or strong or fast. It’s because they know something. They had learned this skill and they can use it. And it is something I can learn, too.
The next thing we did was called grappling. That meant that once we were on the ground from the takedown, we had to try to fight on the ground. Not with punches or kicks, but with wrestling moves and something called “jiu-jitsu.” But this wasn’t like other martial arts I have seen where people are standing in line kicking air. This was like real fighting.
And the first thing that I learned was that I DIDN’ T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT FIGHTING. Once you hit the ground in jiu-jitsu, the other guy is trying to make you “tap out,” which means give up. They would grab my arm or my wrist or my shoulder and move it to a place where it wasn’t supposed to go. It would hurt just a little bit, then I would tap out, and they would let me go.
I couldn’t believe how good they were. I couldn’t believe how even the littler kids could easily make me TAP OUT!
And once again, it was just because they had knowledge. They had learned jiu-jitsu and now they could win a fight against a bigger kid. This is exactly what I needed to stand up to Kenny!
So my first night of jiu-jitsu was humiliating, exhausting, kind of painful, embarrassing, and COMPLETELY AWESOME because for the first time in my life, I realized that I could learn a skill that would give me the ability to defend myself and my friends from guys like Kenny. FREEDOM!
CHAPTER 11: HYDROPHOBIA
I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE TODAY. Or more specifically, DROWN! Uncle Jake knows that I DON’ T LIKE WATER. AT ALL. But he says I have to learn how to swim. He told me that two-thirds of the earth is covered in water. I told him my neighborhood was ALL LAND. But he is right. I was embarrassed last year at Mount Tom when I couldn’t play any games or enjoy the field trip AT ALL. Instead, I sat on the beach, which was okay for a little while in the morning. But by lunchtime, it was SWELTERING. And I was sweating. All the other kids jumped in the water and cooled off and played Chicken, and Sharks and Minnows, and Marco Polo. And what did I do? Sat in the sun sweating and getting sunburned. YUCK!
Way of the Warrior Kid--From Wimpy to Warrior the Navy SEAL Way Page 3