The Firing Line Forums - View Single Post - Knife throwing-Who can do it?

greeneggsnham · October 20, 2005, 09:38 PM

I almost didn't tell this story for fear of being considered a quack or something, but during my short college days before the military, I lived in a fraternity house, and happened to work for the University Police Department. We had one member who was later blackballed because he was vulgar and abusive. I was just past my pledgeship and living in the house and found myself alone one day outside. He snuck up behind me in the front yard and grabbed me in a bear hug and wouldn't let go, so I whacked him with a tree limb beneath me. He was not playing around. A fellow about as large as me, he was the winner of the Sigma Chi Fight Nights. He managed to peel the skin off my big toe to the point of it being a hanging bloody mess. As I hobbled up the steps a baseball sized rock slammed into the door about a foot past my head and as he screamed, I turned to see him charging me across the yard. We had been bar-b-q'ing a few days before and a large dirty meat fork was lying on the steps. I quickly grabbed it and hurled it and it hit him about twenty paces away at a full charge. It stuck out of his head between his eyes like in a cowboy and indian movie and he simply crumbled to the ground and didn't move. The guys came pouring out of the house about the time he collapsed in mid stride with fourteen inches of meat fork sticking out of his head. I thought I'd killed him, and so did everyone else. He lie there not moving with his eyes open. Common sense did not prevail, and he was thrown into the back of a pickup truck and we took him to the hospital where it was determined that he was drunk, and that the fork had not penetrated his skull, but simply slid under the skin as the forks bent. Lesson: I had practiced throwing knives maybe two days a month for the past several years. In a personal combat experience, the training paid off, and was very effective at stopping a large intoxicated, and known violent aggressor. I hope no one ever has to rely on this in an actual situation as it was then, and is now, many years later, simply horrible.

October 20, 2005, 09:38 PM	#49
greeneggsnham Member Join Date: October 19, 2005 Posts: 85	I almost didn't tell this story for fear of being considered a quack or something, but during my short college days before the military, I lived in a fraternity house, and happened to work for the University Police Department. We had one member who was later blackballed because he was vulgar and abusive. I was just past my pledgeship and living in the house and found myself alone one day outside. He snuck up behind me in the front yard and grabbed me in a bear hug and wouldn't let go, so I whacked him with a tree limb beneath me. He was not playing around. A fellow about as large as me, he was the winner of the Sigma Chi Fight Nights. He managed to peel the skin off my big toe to the point of it being a hanging bloody mess. As I hobbled up the steps a baseball sized rock slammed into the door about a foot past my head and as he screamed, I turned to see him charging me across the yard. We had been bar-b-q'ing a few days before and a large dirty meat fork was lying on the steps. I quickly grabbed it and hurled it and it hit him about twenty paces away at a full charge. It stuck out of his head between his eyes like in a cowboy and indian movie and he simply crumbled to the ground and didn't move. The guys came pouring out of the house about the time he collapsed in mid stride with fourteen inches of meat fork sticking out of his head. I thought I'd killed him, and so did everyone else. He lie there not moving with his eyes open. Common sense did not prevail, and he was thrown into the back of a pickup truck and we took him to the hospital where it was determined that he was drunk, and that the fork had not penetrated his skull, but simply slid under the skin as the forks bent. Lesson: I had practiced throwing knives maybe two days a month for the past several years. In a personal combat experience, the training paid off, and was very effective at stopping a large intoxicated, and known violent aggressor. I hope no one ever has to rely on this in an actual situation as it was then, and is now, many years later, simply horrible.