Who Needs Eye Brows?

[sensei8]

Ok! It's said that things come in three's. Well, I'm not exception to this rule, no matter how I might be preceived as...not playing with a full deck.

It's the year 1995. I've been asked to put on a very small Tameshiwara (breaking) demo during a benefit hosted by the Sheriff's department for a teenage boy would had lost his life 3 years prior to this annually held event at the hands of a drunk driver. Main focus of this benefit was a car show because this teen had a love for all types of cars.

I was honored to have been asked to do this, so I loaded up my materials and headed to Carpenteria, California to do my thing at the request of the Sheriff department.

I only had 10 minutes but that was plenty, afterall, it's just breaking. I set up several stations consisting of landscaping bricks. These bricks are primarily used by, you guessed it, landscaping companies. These bricks are 2" X 4" X 16" which are commonly used in landscaping and breaking demos of the Martial Arts world. Why not? There easily availible at most, if not all, home improvement stores across the USA.

By the way, this story isn't about mistakingly choosing the wrong materials. No! It's about choosing the right or the wrong assistant for this demo. Well, it's not about choosing the right assistant...it's about choosing the well intended, yet, still wrong choice of an assistant.

This assistant isn't even a Martial Artist who's familiar with this type of demo. No! This assistant, chosen by myself, is the dad of one of my 12 year old students. I'll call him Terry, eventhough that's not his real name.

Why Terry? Why not! Here's the key. Terry is a Sheriff! Aha! There's the key. Terry willingly volunteers my name to the Sheriff department, which is fine with me. Terry asks if he could assist me with the demo. I usually take some of my students for my demos for the main reason of my students will be familiar with every aspect of a breaking demo; set up and the like. Yet, it's the Sheriff department and Terry that are asking me to do this. Also, I thought that it would be cool to have a fully dressed out Sheriff assisting in the demo. The kid part in me still gets me into trouble!

We do one stack after another stack during this demo. Some of the stacks of 10 bricks were hit with so much force, according to some of the Sheriffs officers watching this demo, that the bottom 3 bricks literally exploded when broken.

All seems fair as I come to the last stack of 10. Well, it's not as fair as I thought, thanks to Terry. I had briefed and coached Terry for 2 weeks prior to the actual event. Terry a Sheriff is use to being briefed and coached in very exacting details.

This last stack has a surprise for the crowd in attendance...yet, little did I know that the surprise was on me. This last stack is a fire break! Again, Terry's a Sheriff and I've briefed/coached him, I feel he's ready. Well, ready is fine but properly prepared/trained is another. I've also not allowed the excitement factor to be included in both the crowd as well as Terry; but it was evident. I forgot to inform Terry as to just how much charcoal fluid to put on the stack. An important point in detail, a far more important to leave for Terry to "guess" and one point that caught my attention immediately.

A baptismal in fire...literally!

WHAM! WHOSH! Well, wham is fine, but, whosh isn't. Whosh is the sound that I hear as the flame surrounds my head. This is just a split-second in duration, but, it's something I'll never forget soon.

Because the flame surrounded my head so fast, it was more of a flash, and therefore, the heat wasn't enough to cause me any serious and/or any minor injuries. Superficially at best, thank God.

In Terry's excitement and inexperience...oh heck...because of my stupidity...Terry had practically drowned the stack in this charcoal fluid which puddled up on the top brick. Yeah...picture starts to come more clearer, huh? Oh yeah!

My eyebrows we nearly gone, both of them, the front part of my hairline was singed, and my eyelashes looked like a badly plucked chicken. I smelt burnt hair for longer than I truly cared to.

Moral of this story...leave the charcoal fluid for a BBQ...and don't let anybody but you treat the material to be set on fire. Otherwise, you'll be on fire! Doesn't look good during anytime especially in a Martial Arts demo.

Am I really the only Martial Artists that's that much of a dunderhead at times? I hope not!

Marshmallows anyone?!?

Edited April 28, 2009 by sensei8

[Patrick]

Nice story. Thanks for sharing.

[DWx]

great story. Burnt hair is so not a good look.

[bushido_man96]

Man, Bob, I can imagine your suprise at seeing fire well up around you!

[white owl]

Man scary! Thanks for sharing.

[KarateEd]

Ah, the smell of burnt hair.....

[nacal]

I'm very impressed with the breaking of burning bricks!

Eyebrows are overrated anyway