fbhjr

My wife thought I had written about this one before, but I can’t find it.
One of the things I don’t like about LJ is that it is hard to search. But,
there is far more I do like about it.
Anyhow, in my opinion, our most spectacular sword break in Phoenix Swords:
It was back in the spring of 2003 (April 22nd if you care…) and we were
performing for the Grange in Norfolk MA. There were only about 30 people
in the audience and one was an old man in his 80’s who was blind named
Howard. He was very insistent on sitting up front, even though he couldn’t
see, so he could hear better.
My wife and I were doing our oldest fight together (still being use by us
and a few others in Phoenix) and there is one point with a series of high,
low, high hits.
We did the high, we did the low, we went to do the high and my wife’s sword
was not there to meet mine. She was holding the hilt, but the blade was no longer
attached. It happened fast enough that we had time to
turn and see my wife’s blade flipping end over end through the air, right
towards Howard.
At the time it seemed to take forever for the blade to go flipping towards
him, but it must have been a second or so at the most. Certainly far too
little time for either of us to catch up with it and stop it.
It flipped right over Howard’s head, hit the wall behind him (next to the
mother of one of our members who had tagged along) and fell to the floor.
Everyone (and, I do mean everyone) rushed over to Howard.
“Howard are you OK?” people asked.
“What’s going on!” he shouted.
“Did it hit you?”
“Did what hit me? I know something’s happening! What is it!”
We made sure Howard had not been hit and explained what had been going on.
Once he was satisfied we continued with the show albeit a bit more
cautiously than normal.

I was very surprised when they hired us to come back the next year and do a
show for them again. (April 10, 2004 if you still care...)
When we arrived the woman who ran the event came up to me.
“You people are insured, right?” she asked.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “We have one million dollars in liability
insurance.”
“Good, because you remember how you broke a sword last year?” she asked.
“Oh yes, I won’t forget that.”
“And, it almost hit Howard.”
“I remember that quite well too.”
“Well, he died.”
“What?” I asked as my mind raced back to that time a year before.
It didn’t hit him, I thought to myself. I know it didn’t hit him. I
checked myself. He couldn’t have had a heart attack from seeing it come
towards him as he couldn’t see it coming.
“He was so looking forward to your show again, but I’m afraid he died two
weeks ago,” she said.
Two weeks ago? I thought. 49 weeks after our sword almost hit him? I
don’t think I need to involve my insurance company in that…
“That’s so sad,” I said. “I remember him well. He was a nice man.”

After the show she went up to my wife and told her she was very touched by
how moved I was to hear of Howard’s death and I must be a very caring man.
And, she was right, I cared.