The Knife Fight

As any redneck boys will do, we always found ways to entertain ourselves growing up. My brothers and I generally had loads of fun, and had surprisingly few accidents along the way, considering what we found fun. I mean, sure, I blew my eyebrows off a few times with potato cannons, and got a red ant pile dropped in my lap, and temporarily blinded my cousin once with a firecracker, but who didn't have stuff like that happen? No, today, I'm gonna tell you about one of the times when s#!t got serious. I'm gonna tell you about the knife fight.

It was early march, and I was about 10. My brother Matt was about 15, and Barrett was about 18. The winter chill was still lingering in the air, but in Mom's mind, it was time for spring cleaning, so that meant we had to get to cleaning, or get out of the house. Naturally, we were in the pasture, looking for a way to entertain ourselves.

We were all standing there miserably wiping our runny noses on the sleeves of our jackets, when Matt had a stroke of genius. He saw a 6 foot long 1X4 leaning against the wall of the shed, and decided to try to throw his belt knife into it. The wall of the shed was wood as well, so we could easily see how badly he missed, as his knife was quivering in the shed wall about 2 feet from the board.

Barrett and I each took our turns, then we all went and retrieved our knifes, and proceeded to try again. We were highly amused, and entertained ourselves in this way for a good half hour. Then, of course, my older brothers decided to play mean older brother games.

Matt threw his knife. 'Kerthunk'. Barrett threw his knife. 'Kerthunk'. Before I could throw mine, they winked at each other, and raced forward to retrieve theirs. I was a bit miffed, but I expected such boorish behavior from my brothers from time to tome. After all, they both were interested in girls at that point, and couldn't be trusted to display proper behavior.

They got back. 'Kerthunk, kerthunk'. They ran forward again, Barrett laughing in his fine new pair of insulated Carhart overalls.

The third time they did it, I had enough. While they retrieved their knives, I fumed, and as they turned around, I thought "I'll show them!"  I threw my knife for all I was worth, right at the 1X4.

My aim was off. I sunk my knife right into the knee of a pair of brand new Carhart overalls. Barrett's face was actually pretty comical. His mouth made a large 'O', and his eyes were as big as teacups, whites showing all the way around. I was very concerned that I had killed him to death, and started forward, which proved to be my mistake. If I had taken off running immediately after throwing the knife, I'm sure I could have outrun him, or at least made it up a tree. As it was, I didn't realise my mistake until he reached down and slowly grasped the handle of my knife, and dislodged it from his knee, where it had superficially cut him. It probably would have been much worse if not for those thick new layers of Carhart on his knee.

In retrospect, I'm pretty glad he didn't have the presence of mind to hang on to my knife. If he hadn't dropped it before chasing me down, you may not be reading this today.