Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Choices

As I have gone through my life I have watched many people make decisions from "Pride". Sometimes pride is useful to your survival and sometimes it will just make sure you are dead or dying. So, since I tend to be a pragmatist when all else fails I found that "Survival" is more important than pride. Because I would say about 90% of the time "pride" is actually false pride and actually not pride of any real value.

So, being an opportunist and making decisions because "You actually might survive the consequences of your actions" might be a better choice than being prideful and dead or dying.

The first time I faced something like this was when I was watching two boys older than me playing "mumblipeg" in a park in the 1950s likely around 1956 or 1958 when I was 8 or 10. The fact that they were playing mublipeg at all out in the open should have been a clue for me not to go up close to them but "what did I know I was only 8 or 10 years of age?" The result was one of the boys drew the knife out of the ground and grabbed me and put it to my throat and told me he was going to cut off my head. Then he cut my neck a little so it bled to make me know he was crazy enough to do that. Then I had to try to survive this situation. When they finally let me loose about 1/2 hour or more later I was enraged in a way people seldom get. So, I went home and loaded my rifle (which I was given by my Grandmother at age 8) and proceeded to go kill those boys. But then, because I wasn't completely dysfunctional like those boys were and tortured to the point by life where soon someone was going to kill them for real, I called a friend on the phone. So, I called my friend on the phone and told him what had happened. Luckily, this was a good friend and he said that these boys were going to be killed soon anyway because that was what happened always in the 1950s when I was young when people were out of line like that. Someone would off them. But, what he said was, "Why should you spend the rest of your life in jail for killing them?" So, I listened to him knowing he was right. Why should I go to jail for killing two insane people who should have been aborted instead of tortured every day of their lives into being crazy people who would have to be killed by someone or have to spend the rest of their lives in jail soon.

Because it was the 1950s I never told my parents about this until I was an adult. That was just the way things were done then.

Choices give us the chance to stay alive. In this case my pride would have either killed me or had me spend the rest of my life in prison or worse.

After this experience and having survived this I realized this was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I didn't trust anyone to get me into a compromising position after that. I was ready to defend myself to the death after that. People didn't mess with me after that because I could easily scare people into leaving me alone in whatever way was necessary. I knew I would survive anything after that. Strangely enough it increased my compassion for crazy people but also hardened me to survive anything in my life after that. So, as horrific as this was it was also one of the things that has helped to me to save my own life many many times since.

I was just a kindly boy before this but after that I could also be a very scary young man when I needed to be.

Mumblety-peg

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Photo of a person losing at the game of mumblety-peg.

Mumblety-peg (also known as mumbley-peg, mumblepeg, mumble-the-peg, mumbledepeg or mumble-de-peg) is an old outdoor game played by children using pocketknives.^[1] The term "Mumblety-peg" came from the practice of putting a peg of about 2 or 3 inches into the ground. The loser of the game had to take it out with his teeth.^[2] Mumbletypeg was very popular as a schoolyard game in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, but with increased concern over child safety the game has declined in popularity. Mark Twain's book Tom Sawyer, Detective recounts "mumbletypeg" as one of boys' favorite outdoor games.^[3]

Overview

Mumblety peg is generally played between two people with the aid of a pocket knife. In one version of the game, two opponents stand opposite one another with their feet shoulder-width apart. The first player then takes the knife and throws it to "stick" in the ground as near his own foot as possible. The second player then repeats the process. Whichever player "sticks" the knife closest to his own foot wins the game.
If a player "sticks" the knife in his own foot, he wins the game by default, although few players find this option appealing because of the possibility of bodily harm. The game combines not only precision in the knife-throwing, but also a good deal of bravado and proper assessment of one's own skills.
"[M]umblety-peg, a game in which one contestant threw a jackknife as deeply as possible into the ground and another player tried to extract it with his or her teeth."^[4]
There are many other variants of the basic game. One relatively safe version is very similar to H-O-R-S-E basketball. Here, the first player attempts to stick his knife in the ground using some unusual technique, such as behind the back or off his knee. If successful, the second player must duplicate the feat. In some cases, just getting the knife to stick at all can be the objective but in others, the players attempt to stick their knives into the peg or as close to it as possible.
In the variant known as "Stretch", the object of the game is to make the other player fall over from having to spread his legs too far apart. The players begin facing each other some distance apart with their own heels and toes touching, and take turns attempting to stick their knives in the ground outboard of the other player's feet. If the knife sticks, the other player must move his foot out to where the knife stuck while keeping the other foot in place, provided the distance between foot and knife is about twelve inches or less. Play continues until one player falls or is unable to make the required stretch.
The highly dangerous "Chicken" variant is the opposite of "Stretch". Here, one player bets the other how many sticks he will allow the other to make between his feet. The betting player then stands with his feet as far apart as possible and the other player throws his knife into the gap between them, aiming as close to the center as possible. If the knife sticks, the betting player moves whichever foot is closer to the knife to where the knife stuck. This process repeats until either the agreed-upon number of sticks has been accomplished (betting player wins), either player refuses to go any further (whichever player did not "chicken out" wins), or the knife hits the betting player (betting player wins). Given the halving of the distance between the feet at each stick, five sticks is essentially the upper limit that still leaves the feet very slightly apart, so such bets are rarely made or taken.

References

^ Newell, W. W. (2010). Games and Songs of American Children. Nabu Press. p. 189. ISBN 978-1-145-39322-6.
^ "Old Schoolyard Games". Forest Preserve District of Cook County (Illinois). Newton/ANL. Retrieved 23 August 2010.
^ Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, Detective Pg. 1
^ Calvert, Karin (1992). Children in the House: The material culture of Early Childhood, 1600-1900. USA: Northeastern University Press. p. 116. ISBN 1-55553-138-5.

External links

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (August 2010)