Blood on the dance floor
by Matt Worley

One of the coolest things a Cub Scout can be given is a pocket knife. A little bit of violence for an eight-year-old kid. I was completely stoked to get my pocket knife oh those many years ago, even if I didn't actually know what stoked meant. I'd taken all the classes, shown I knew how to handle such a potent weapon of destruction, and even whittled a nice looking handkerchief slide. It was supposed to look like an Indian chief, but I think it looked mostly like mangled wood with a big hole in the middle. But I was the one who made it with a knife, and that was the point.

One day, soon after deciding my new pocket knife would be the ticket to fortune and fame through the art of whittling, I screwed up. I was working with a broom handle, trying to work the wood into something useful, when I pushed too hard and in the wrong direction. The knife slipped through the upper wood skin of the broom handle right into the lower part of my arm. I stabbed myself. Accidentally, of course. For a few seconds, I thought the Carve-n-chit gods were going to come down and take my knife away, but nothing like that happened.

I had pushed the tip of my knife briefly into my arm, making a small puncture hole. The whole was gaping, maybe a millimeter wide, but it wasn't bleeding. It never did bleed. A white scar eventually healed over it and to this day, there is a mark on my arm. It's gotten stretched a bit over time, as the skin on my arm expanded along with the rest of my body, but the scar is a constant reminder I don't always do everything right.

Mostly my life has been without injury. Sure, I skinned my legs and arms while running through the fields and parks of Kansas, Missouri and New Mexico, but I never fell out of a tree and broke my arm. I never misjudged a mogul on the ski slopes, and broke my leg. And through my entire bow hunting phase, I never killed anything other than a rabbit or the occasional bird. The birds were accidents. I just wanted to see if I could do it -- I didn't actually want to kill them. But I was pretty good, and a couple of birds got stuck because I was out of rabbits to shoot at.

The most violence I've done to myself or anyone else, for that matter (except those rabbits) occurred while playing drums. Rim shots clipped pieces of finger meat open, and wide cymbal swipes have accomplished the same. Bleeding on the drum heads, well, that kind of thing happens. And the calluses are worse than anything any of those guys in the locker room ever joked about.

I've been in a few fights, mostly because I said something I shouldn't to a person who really wanted to hit somebody. Smart-asses always have this problem. As do bullies and pugilists.

And I guess that's the whole problem with this situation in the Middle East. There's this one smart ass who won't shut up. Big fish in the little pond, as we like to say here in the desert. Big fish spit water on all the little fish, and then the fishermen come in and kill them all -- except the big fish who is smart enough to let his competition get hooked.

I was in a supermarket yesterday buying a couple 12 packs of Pepsi. They were on sale. The lines were impossibly long (I assume everyone was getting last minute supplies for their Valentine's Day dinners), and we all had fun trying to figure out which line was going to move faster. About five minutes into this tango, a ruckus came stumbling up one of the aisles.

A plain clothed security guard with handcuffs was trying to subdue a homeless man. In about thirty seconds there were five big supermarket checkers on top of the situation. The homeless man wasn't giving up without a fight, and the men of the supermarket weren't going to let him go. And then they started punching him. In the face, on the back, behind the knees, in the stomach, anywhere that might get him to stop struggling.

In a minute it was all over. They dragged the homeless man back to the supermarket office by his legs. His face and handcuffed hands dragging the ground. He was trying to steal a package of individually wrapped cheese.

All I can think about the scene now is that the homeless man will probably try to steal something to eat on another day, and the supermarket checkers will be there once again to beat him into submission.

Matt Worley was actually scared more by his own actions yesterday. He just stood by and watched.

return to the Shut up, I'm talking page
return to the LIES home page
return to the A&A home page