BACK THEN WE WERE TOUGH!

(Mar 95/#7)

Back then we were tough! Didn’t matter about a little Martial Arts Injury…we were tough!

We pounded telephone poles until we had respectable calluses!

We took hammers to our shins!

We supported our local dentist!

One time a fellow I knew went to a tournament. During the course of the tournament his fingers were jammed so that the second knuckle was back on top of the third bone. He laughed, pulled it out, put it back in place, and kept going!

But my favorite happening was the time a friend of mine named Dave decided to go on a television show. He was opening a karate school and a little local programming could go a long way. His mistake was in asking Bruce to help him.

“Yes,” said Dave, “We believe in sincerity and virtue. No, children who study karate don’t start getting in fights, they start avoiding them. Yes, discipline is what the martial arts are all about.”

He should have said humor.

A short time later Dave and Bruce began to demonstrate their karate. They did kata, and self defense, and a little freestyle, and…

“And now,” said Bruce, taking over the mike, “Dave is going to break two boards with a punch.”

After the sounds of splintering wood had subsided: “And now Dave is going to break three pieces of wood with a kick.”

Kiai! Smash! All was going well. That was the last break and Dave planned on ending the demonstration, but right in the middle of his bow Bruce’s voice came over the air again.

“And now Dave will break two boards with a spearhand.”

Dave couldn’t break two boards with a spearhand! He had never even tried!

But he was actually on TV with thousands and thousands of people watching!

KIAI!

The boards were separated with apparent ease.

So were the bones in Dave’s fingers.

But Dave was a trouper. He even shook hands with everybody on the way out of the studios, didn’t show a grimace or groan, and nobody knew he went straight to the hospital.

Later, Dave asked Bruce why he had set him up like that.

“I just thought it was going to be really funny!” was Bruce’s response.

Maybe the tale of this Martial Arts injury should have been ‘real men know when to laugh.’