Chocolate Break

Walked into the office yesterday and the Lieutenant looked up, "The chaplain gave me a ten pound bar of chocolate. What should I do with it?"
"Eat it, " I said.
"That's ten pounds!"
"Eat half today and half tomorrow. That's what Kami would do."
"You really want to see me curled up in a corner unconscious and bloated with brown drool trickling out of my mouth?" She has a way with images, huh?
However my wife's a chocoholic. It wouldn't be anything new. "It wouldn't be anything new," I said. The LT said she'd planned on breaking it and giving it to staff, but it wouldn't break.

I picked up the bar. Ten pounds of chocolate is big- about a foot by eighteen inches and almost two inches thick. I handed it to Gary. He knew right away what was going on and held it with locked arms. I drove a shotei through the brick, splitting it nicely in two. "There you go."

"You're a dork," the LT said.

I don't do tameshiwara (breaking) much. It's mostly tricks. The only time I do or teach them is when a student (who is usually a small female) confides that she is not sure she could really hurt someone. Then I teach her to break a brick over an anvil. The break is nothing. A completely untrained person can learn it in a few minutes... but it is a huge confidence booster. Is a brick anything like a rib? No. Is striking on the move anything like a set strike on an anvil? No. But people still derive confidence from it. Go figure.

Anyway, the chocolate was a weird consistancy. It was tougher than a board of the same thickness. With a little give to it a noticeable amount of force was absorbed in the flex.

Today my wrist hurts. How embarrassing is that? Martial artist thug injures self breaking chocolate.

Lieutenant was right. I'm a dork.