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What is your favorite memory you have that's related to your involvement in martial arts?

For me, it was in junior high school.

I was walking to a class by myself and I heard someone yelling out "Ho Chi Min". The guy who was yelling this was a popular African American kid who had like 10 other kids with him. [I'm a Korean and Ho Chi Min is the former Vietnamese president. Calling me Ho Chi Min was a racial slur to humilate me and to get a laugh out of the crowd that was following him]

I knew that he had picked on other asian kids before and none of them stood up to him before so he enjoyed making fun of them.

I don't know what came over me but I was just not going to take any crap that day. I turned around, stared right at him, and said "What did you say?"

It seemed like an eternity as I stood there, while the crowd he had with him also stood there in silence. I think he was stunned that I stood up to him because he didn't say anything. After few minutes of this, I just turned around and walked away. There wasn't a single peep out of the crowd and nobody said any more racial slurs after that.

It's my most fond memory because martial arts training gave me the confidence to stand up to someone bigger and more than one person. But more importantly, I was able to avoid any kind of physical confrontation.