Cleaning up the office, getting rid of a lot of old crap, because come the new carpets and floors and stuff, we'll be repainting my space here and since everything has to be moved out to do those things, might as well make it a little easier.
You accrue a lot of knick-knacks when you have an office at home, fanboy toys, mementos of the good old days, but one day you look up and realize that either the memories weren't so good, or in some cases, are gone. Why did I put that doohickey there?
When you have chotskies everywhere that don't get any attention save being dusted, better they go into a box and into the attic. Or away altogether.
So the brick.
Forty-four years ago this month, I had the notion that breaking bricks with my hands was a good idea. I was, as you can see from what is written on the brick, twenty-one, and invincible.
So took my bearded self out into the back yard, not far from the alligator pear tree (that's avocado for those of you who don't know the term.) I set up a stack of bricks, laid one across them, and with my spouse working the Polaroid instant camera, did my best imitation of a "karate chop" and broke the sucker. There is the moment of destruction.
The brick, not my hand.
I did that for a few years, until somebody slipped a firebrick in on me, and that was the end of that trick for me.
The brick will stay on the shelf, next to the mugger's knife from the visit to NYC in 1982, but a whole lot of other clutter is going elsewhere ...
7 comments:
Just tossed my first board broken (into three pcs, har) just a few weeks ago. That was 27yrs back.....
You're not seriously going to leave it on that cliffhanger, are you? Mugging?
Well, it wasn't much:
http://themanwhonevermissed.blogspot.com/2007/11/violins.html
Huh, I missed that one. Thanks for the link. Were there ever any repercussions for the teamster? Also wondering which art you were most practiced in at the time of the attempted mugging, and, was that what you reverted back to? (I understand that there is a lot of overlap, and, at the end of the day, it's all just body mechanics)
We didn't say anything about the teamster, who gave my boss a call half an hour after we got back to the office. Figured out who he was and called to bluster. Ron informed him that he routinely recorded all calls and the tone changed in a hurry. Why, I was just kidding. Y'all should come by the hall and we can have a drink.
Right. Hold your breath waiting on that one. I dis- remember what happened to him, but allegedly, he had something to do with ratting out Jimmy Hoffa to the Feds, and apparently went to ground. And maybe into the ground.
At the mugging, I was mostly into Okinawa-te, with some Kung-fu. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have run like the wind and not looked back. I'd had a few glasses of wine beforehand. Alcohol makes you stupid.
Well, it sounds like you beat the odds, regardless. Who knows, if the mugger remembered what went down, after he got over his hangover, perhaps he was deterred from that line of work. Sometimes it only takes one good scare, after all.
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