Now that I am doing interviews, I often hear the phrase “Break a leg!’
As you know, it is considered bad luck in theater circles to wish an actor good luck. So you say to him, “Break a leg!”
Recently a well-wisher told me, as I faced an interview, “Break his leg!”
I replied that “Break his leg” is not necessarily a good thing to say to a former combat mercenary. It was a joke, but it reminded me of something.
Once I was waiting for a plane in an airport in Eastern Europe.
You know how it is, in cases like that you strike up conversations with people and it turns out that the people you just happen to talk to you are amazingly similar to you. So I started talking with a guy and it turned out he was a former member of the Special Forces, Army.
The man is now wealthy, but I would be willing to bet that, like me, he got an assignment in that country and was doing the work gratis.
I know that a lot of you are experts in martial arts and will tell me I don’t know what I am talking about, but a million years ago when I was young I learned a special kick to take out a person’s knee.
When I say take out, I do not mean a temporary incapacitation. If you are in unarmed combat and you used that kick, the knee was gone forever. Maybe modern surgery can take care of it, but back then it shoved the knee backwards and took out everything that goes with it.
It is a useful kick. It puts a lot of pressure on something and I use it to shove luggage back into line and so forth. I did that in the airport. When I did, I noticed one guy who was also waiting for the plane flinch. He could see the horror I could be doing to the person such a kick was intended for.
I said to the former Special Forces man, “I’ll bet you that man there is somebody we can relate to.”
So I got that guy into the conversation and, lo and behold, he too had been Special Forces, Air Force.
It was an interesting experience on a number of levels, and I hadn’t remembered until someone told me, “Break his leg.”
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