The Paranoids are After Me!

Martial Arts Humor…

THE PARANOIDS ARE AFTER ME!

(Dec 94/#4)

My brother, some years ago, gave me the title for this month’s ‘Case Histories.’ My brother thinks I’m crazy, but he’s a cop and the martial arts humor of his ‘Case Histories’ is a lot wilder than mine.

My sister thinks we’re both crazy, but she’s a police dispatcher and her ‘Case Histories’ are drawn from a large cross section of…dare I call it humanity?

What my meandering crosshairs are trying to focus in on are what crazy really is.

Crazy, according to one dictionary, is:

1) mentally unbalanced.

If I knew anybody that was mentally balanced I would have them explain this to me.

2) Immoderately fond.

I have been ‘immoderately fond’ of karate since Noah went skinny dipping. (Don’t tell anybody, but I actually went to karate class on my wedding night!)

3) Extremely impractical.

Tell that to the guy who signs my paychecks!

So what the heck is crazy? Let me give you a few examples.

Crazy is sitting around talking about dismembering the human body.

What normal, well balanced person would ever do that?.

Crazy is the outlaw biker who studied the martial arts who told me the purpose of a single finger strike to the eye is not merely to ‘deflate the eyeball’ but, by angling the finger correctly, to insert the finger and ‘pop out the eyeball.’ He said one is then supposed to chase the rolling eyeball and step on it in full view of the victim.

I didn’t ask him how a person missing an eyeball could be considered to have a ‘full view’ of things.

Crazy are the movies where the hero decides to kill himself and delivers a karate strike to his own body and expires.

But my favorite example of crazy is the fellow who came in to watch one of my classes. Afterwards he said, “You know, that’s great stuff, but I have something a little better.

“What’s that?” I asked, expecting him to pull out a toy pistol (this was a while ago, now they pull out real pistols!)

The fellow dropped to his hands and knees and started barking like a dog.

Getting to his feet and brushing off his pants the fellow said, “when I do that people think I’m crazy and they don’t mess with me.”

You know, now that I think about it, when it comes to martial arts humor, that’s about the sanest thing I ever heard!