As many of you know, I love to read – always have.  My taste runs to history, hard science, social science, current events and the occasional good sci-fi book (hard to find these days).  Relatives have told me that they recall that I self-taught myself to read when I was 3-4 years old.  Whether that’s true or not, my parents used to credit the many Golden Books they bought for me when I was very young.  Despite their investment, I can only say that my favorite reading material when I was very young was….DC comic books!  I especially loved the DC Action comics which featured my favorite superheros: Superman, Superboy, Green Lantern, and The Justice League of America!!

Back then, the comic book cost 10 cents – some years later, I remember that the price was raised a whopping 20% to 12 cents an issue! Since each issue had to last me until the next one arrived at the stands, I always made sure to read each and every page again and again.  When I say each and every page, that included the Letters to the Editor section, which sometimes was more entertaining and informative than the stories in the issue.  There, serious readers (yes kids, we had nerds even back then) would question and debate hot and pressing topics such as:  When Superman used his heat vision as Clark Kent, why didn’t his glasses melt?   Or – If Superman’s costume was made by Ma Kent from his invulnerable baby blanket, how could she cut the material? Or – When Superman traveled back into time and met up with Superboy, who was stronger?  Or – If Superman’s powers come from our yellow sun, why doesn’t he get weaker on cloudy days or at night like my solar water heater (joke)?  Anyways, you get a feel for the intense dialogue contained even in the “filler pages” of the comic book.

I also made sure to read the inside of the comic book cover, as there were all kinds of interesting ads with small print and illustrations crammed into the single page.  I have to admit that since these ads were primarily aimed at a young, nerdish audience, they often promised more than they could deliver.  I also have to admit falling for a number of them.  There was the ad for “Sea Monkeys”, complete with drawings of what appeared to be mermen under the sea.  For the low price (typically 98 cents, or $1.98 or some such) one could order these amazing creatures…which turned out to be brine shrimp eggs.  At least mine hatched.  I also ordered the amazing Killifish, which would appear a few days after adding water.  The plastic bowl containing the Killifish eggs (kids, you can look these up, these are real fish – look kinda like guppies) arrived, I anxiously added water and waited for my fish to emerge….After several weeks, i gave up hope and threw the bowl of stagnant water away.  I ordered the magic plastic film that would turn our black and white TV into a color TV!…and it merely made the images blurry with a greenish/orange tinge.  At least my special spy glasses (with tiny mirrors on the inside corner) worked, allowing me to see without turning my head for anyone lurking behind me on the dangerous streets of Pearl City.  There was also the 6′ long spaceship able to accommodate 2 or 3 kids – turned out to be a thin 6′ piece of cardboard in the shape of a rocket and us “astronauts would sit on one side.  Though my favorite was the ad for Revolutionary soldiers, 198 pieces, enough for two complete armies!  The illustration was really neat and my cousin was fooled into buying what turned out to be two hundred very thin plastic pieces; half were red and half were blue and we tried and tried, but couldn’t figure out which pieces were the infantrymen, officers, or even cannons. But I have great memories of those ads…I guess most of the experience really lay in our young and rich imaginations.

What has this to do with the martial arts, you ask?  Well, the first time I ever read something about the martial arts was…in one of these ads – The secret and ancient art of Jiu-Jitsu, complete with instructions on how to use the yawara stick, a palm-sized asian weapon.  Like the Killifish, this weapon and the martial art were real, though we never ordered the book of secret techniques, haha. I suppose the ad was aimed at the slightly older reader…the one who was a “110 lb weakling” tired of having sand kicked in his face in front of his girl at the beach and wanting to learn how to become strong like Charles Atlas and walk around wearing leopard swim trunks.  I would never have dreamt back then, that of all the fantastic things those ads promised me, the only one that would take hold of my life from the first time I stepped into an Aikido dojo in 1963, would be…the martial arts.  For the young at heart.