When
I was in primary school, besides watching cartoons, there was a
bunch of TV drama action programs that a lot of kids my age watch.
From a talking car in Knight Rider, to watching Mr. T’s weird
hairdo from the A Team and watching in anticipation when the guy
in Manimal changed into a rabid beast.. man that was TV at its finest.
But there was one movie that made an impact on me and it was called
the American Ninja!
The A Team.. Every episode that made scrap
metal into fighting machines.
I swear
I saw the Knight Rider car parked at
Tampines Mall once! Honest!
Anybody
remember Manimal?! Damn, this show is the best. I can't remember
how many times I fold my hand and made
it into a "hand-paw." Haha!
American Ninja! This movie is responsible
for the ninja craze during the 80s!
Now
this movie was about a white guy (you know how Hollywood is)
who learned some cool martial arts from this short yoda-looking
Japanese guy when he was young. In the movie the white guy comes
from the military and he doesn’t speak much. But when
he does, he speaks softly and straight to the point. When the
bad guys comes, he would get into his black ninja costume and
kick some major ass. He also got a lot of nifty ninja gadgets…
from a ninja sword to them awesome ninja stars. And not forgetting,
the cloud-exploding-mist thing for him to make a quick escape.
Ninja gears for Bunnies!
It
is little surprise that this movie made a huge impact on me. When
everybody wanted to be a doctor, a policeman or fireman, I wanted
to be a ninja. If they have a Ninja Diploma course in the polytechnics,
I will be the first to sign up. I was very serious about my newfound
ambition. I didn’t know that such a profession existed before.
You kick ass in a black suit and you get to blind guys with stars
made of steel… definitely better than working in your local
7-11, serving slurpees to fat school kids wouldn’t you agree?
So I decided to start my “training.”
I decided to not talk as often in class. Because you can’t
have a talking-always-making-jokes kinda ninja right? I also learned
how to make some stars out of paper. I got it from another boy
who knows origami cause he too was struck with the ninja bug after
watching the movie. Now I am a quiet boy with ninja paper stars
in his pocket… I’m throwing paper stars like no tomorrow.
Whenever a kid in school look at me wrong I would throw a star
and give him a paper cut in his eye. Girls were annoying back
then so a lot of my stars were used at them too.
I don’t
have that cloud escape thingy but I manage to improvise by putting
talcum powder on a piece of paper and wrap the paper like nasi lemak.
I always have like 8 sachets with me. The minute I need to escape,
I would open a sachet, and blow the contents. A cloud of medicated,
flower fragrance mist would fill the air. I used that a lot on my
little sister.
Works
like a charm.. everytime.
Then
one fine day when I was going to school and throwing stars at myna
birds, I saw a huge banner. It said, “Be a Ninja! Learn Ninja-Do!”
And they have a clip art of a ninja doing a flying kick….
I begged my Mum and 15 mins later, I’m in the club and my
Mum is forking out money to buy Ninja-Do uniforms for my sister
and me. I still remember the guy told my Mum a disclaimer that this
Ninja-Do is NOT the ninjas you see on TV. “Yeah right, they
have the word “ninja” in ninja-do and they have the
ninja clipart. I think this guy is trying to put me down and discourage
me into being a ninja so that he can take all the glory. I’m
no fool.
But I’m kinda disappointed with the Ninja-do uniform.. It’s
all white and our face can be seen. I’ve not been issued any
stars and there’s no sword or whatever weapon. Oh well, I
was still psyche because it’s not everyday that a real ninja
comes to your RC centre, willing to depart his ninja skills to you
at $29.99 for 12 lessons. That’s a bargain if you ask me.
Then
training starts and we learn to punch the air and make some kicks.
We also learned that you gotta make a lot of noise when you kick
but I thought ninjas was suppose to be silent killers.. but I did
it nonetheless. And it was nice to vent your anger on padded bags.
Then they made me spar with a boy way shorter than me. He was like
primary one while I was in primary 4. So I was determine to show
off my ninja skills and give him the dragon kick I have been practicing
for months on my bolster. But the problem was I need to take off
my glasses and that immediately turned me into a blind ninja. Now
how do they expect me to fight the enemy when I can’t even
SEE the enemy?
My opponent reminded me of Scrappy Do.
To
make this long ninja story short, me and my sister eventually quit
Ninja –Do because of one painful experience. It seemed to
me that the instructors from Ninja DO believe that every aspiring
ninja to be must know how to make a split… within 3 lessons
that is. And they practically tortured my sister and me till we
cried. It was like being tortured by the Japanese during WW2. They
spread our legs and pulled our arms. We said stop and being merciless
dejected Ninja bullies, they kept on till I saw my sister cried
harder. Like a protective brother, I stood up and told my sister
to leave with me in the middle of the lesson. We went upstairs and
I clutched all my paper stars and 15 powder sachets and.. told my
Mum what happened.
Malay people are never made to do splits.
Soon
the badminton court cum martial arts dojo turned into one “Hidden
Makcik Crouching Ninja” action. My Mum unleash her fury and
soon, after a series of uppercuts and a nasty fire ball and one
last final crane kick my Mum stole from the Karate kid, the ninjas
admits defeat. Now who needs a ninja when you have Mom?
