I went to a job the other day that made me remember a story. When I
was in third grade I got invited to my first non-family birthday
party for a kid I didn't particularly like. The best part was that it
was a drive-in movie/ sleepover party. I was willing to suck up a
little personal animosity in deference to the first exciting friend
party I had ever been invited to. I went to the kid's house at about
6 and in the basically lawless and safety oblivious 80's we all piled
into the back of his dad's pickup truck and rode the 15 miles to the
drive-in. I say his dad was not at all concerned with safety but that
is not actually true he did tell us to sit flat on our butts in the
bed or he would put his boot up our butts. For ostensibly
heterosexual manly men these hillbilly types spend a inordinate amount of time threatening to insert
objects violently into someone's rectum. Probably nothing to that,
forget I wrote that. Anyway I was in the bed of a truck with some
popcorn watching Karate Kid Two which has one of the best opening
scenes ever in film as far as third grade boys were concerned. Behold:
If it is not abundantly self evident I will tell you what is cool about
this scene. John Kreese of the Cobra Kai Dojo is awesomely douchey.
"Second place is no place" is still my favorite thing to
say when someone gets second place. If taking a teenager down a peg
for losing, then breaking his trophy and chocking him has got to be
one of the all time best motivational techniques. The second best
part is that Mr. Miyagi bests that A-wipe without touching him and
then when the defeated man begs for death he is denied the glory of
death in battle and has his nose honked instead. We repeated that
joke all night and all the next while. We stayed up late fooling
around and then it was time for the PJ's and to my shame I had no
cartoon character themed jam-jams like the other kids. They were al
shocked that I was going to climb into my sleeping bag with just my
clothes on like some kind of barbarian. I was so shamed that I was
about to cry so I faked asleep and laid still so that they wouldn't
mention my lack of officially licensed sleepwear. In the morning I
woke up early and left before there could be any talk about me
wearing the same clothes for two days. It was still worthwhile though
I mean I did get to see an awesome quasi-martial arts movie with a
really funny scene that I got to tell my brother about.
