There is no spoon

I wish I had the vocabulary to explain exactly what happened to me tonight.

I broke a soup spoon.

Okay, more accurately, I wish I could explain what that meant.

I broke a spoon.

It was a Chinese ceramic soup spoon, generously donated by the Chinese restaurant at which we were celebrating my SiFu's birthday.

Now, normally you wouldn't think of the breaking of a ceramic soup spoon as a life-changing experience, but I'll be honest with you, the moment that spoon broke I felt something which very nearly borders on religious (and this is coming from a guy who not so long ago told off a pair of religious fanatics at his doorstep).

Maybe I should start from the beginning.

I try not to generalize if I can avoid it, but Kung Fu practicioners, as a general rule, like to break things; chopsticks, beer bottles, beer cans, rocks, soup spoons, you name it.

We like to break 'em with our bare hands, and it's not a matter of showing off, either. These often seem like parlor tricks (the beer-bottle break, in particular is something of a hoot at drinking parties, 'cause it looks really cool), but there's some genuine value to these breaks. Each one cultivates a certain type of movement, and requires a certain manipulation of ging.

So, after a couple of glasses of cognac (my SiFu likes cognac), the members of the school who were there started breaking things.

We started with the chopstick breaks, which are, believe it or not, a lot harder than they sound. The secret is to break the chopstick(s) without actually hitting anything. You hold them in your hand, and throw a punch with the hand holding the chopsticks into empty space, and the force of your punch breaks the chopsticks.

Like I said: a lot harder than it sounds.

So, after a bit, one of the elder students hands me a pair of chopsticks, and tells me in no uncertain terms: "SiFu says 'break.'"

"I've never broken two before," I told him, "on a good day, I can do one."

"You're thinking too hard," he tells me, "just do it."

Next thing I know, I'm holding two broken chopsticks in my hand.

This was to be the first of four tasks I would complete that night that I had never done before.

So we moved on a bit. Same senior student hands me a beer can. I didn't even know what to do with a beer can, much less how to do it.

He saw my confusion and said, "twist the can in half without letting go of the can."

"I have no clue how to do this."

"You don't have to. Just do it."

Two minutes later, I'm holding two halves of a beer can in my hands, and I'm wondering how the hell I managed to do that. And notwithstanding the small cuts I had in my fingertips from the sharp edges of the can, I was relatively unscathed.

Task number two.

About twenty minutes later, same senior student hands me a beer bottle. "SiFu says 'break,'" he tells me again.

This one, I'd seen people do, but I'd never even thought of doing it before that moment. It's a focused strike at the mouth of a beer bottle which, if done properly, causes the bottom of the bottle (and only the bottom) to break.

If done improperly, you end up with a handful of broken glass.

Here, I'm getting a little apprehensive, since I'm actually doing something where there's a small element of risk involved.

But, two minutes later, I'm looking through the mouth of a beer bottle whose bottom has been almost surgically excised. And I say that with no vanity involved. More shock, really.

Three down.

So, finally (after another glass of cognac), the senior student hands me a spoon.

So, just to recap, my list of casualties thus far is; two chopsticks, a beer can, two beer bottles (I did it again, just to convince myself that the first time wasn't a fluke), and now, they're handing me a spoon.

I'd never broken a spoon before. When I pointed this out to the senior student, he (quite rightly) observed that in the last couple of hours, I'd done no fewer than three things that I'd never done before.

I had to admit that he had a point.

So I hold the spoon in my left hand, and prepare to strike it with the edge of my right.

The senior student stopped me and shook his head. "One finger. Doing it with the whole hand is too easy."

I chose this moment to (respectfully) inform him that he had to be f*cking kidding.

Then he said something that I didn't quite understand the meaning of until last night: "if you don't hit it hard enough to break it, you're going to hurt yourself. If you don't know with every fiber of your being that that spoon is going to break, it won't, and all you'll have to show for it is a bruised finger."

So, I hit the spoon with the index finger of my right hand, I hear a loud snap and in my left hand, I'm suddenly holding a much shorter, significantly less useful spoon.

So, the next day, I'm looking at the ex spoon sitting on my desk, and asking myself how, exactly, I did all this stuff.

My first thought: it's a fluke, obviously. I got lucky.

So, I gather together a few beer bottles, I go to Chinatown and buy myself a few spoons (I didn't have the heart to tell the guy running the store what was going to happen to these spoons as he very carefully wrapped them in newspaper so that they wouldn't break) and some chopsticks, and I set about reproducing each event.

Two chopsticks, two beer bottles, and a soup spoon later, I'm about to stretch the number of broken soup spoons from two to three.

And I pulled back just a fraction. On a break I'd done twice before, I hesitated just a tiny bit.

And it hurt like a sonuvabitch.

Suffice it to say that the spoon, rather arrogantly, refused to break.

The point, which I admit that I was rather verbose getting to, is that the bruise now adorning my right index finger is not the result of the two spoons which I hit hard enough to break, it's the result of the one spoon I hit too softly. The one spoon I didn't put everything I had into hurt me more than the two I hit as hard as I could.

Now, I think there's a life lesson here. Not just about the breaking of ceramic spoons (which, while that would also be a life lesson, I think is probably one of the most useless life lessons in the history of mankind), but about life in general.

Approach life with everything that you've got, or what's the point?

Fun with Fanaticism

So, I'm at home after work, and I'm tired. I'm just about to start making dinner, when there's a knock at my door. I open it.

On the opposite side of said door stands a young woman in her mid-to-late 30's, blonde hair, wearing a long, dark trenchcoat; along with a young man in roughtly the same age bracket. He was wearing a toque, so I don't know what colour his hair was. They were both standing there looking awfully self-righteous, and I immediately thought: "aw, crap. Not again."

"Excuse me, sir, we were wondering if we could borrow a few minutes of your time."

"That depends; how are you planning on giving them back?"

"Pardon?"

"Never mind. What can I do for you?" I replied, deciding on the spot that these people had had their senses of humor amputated.

Which meant that I could have a lot of fun with them.

"As I'm sure you're aware, the Dover Pennsylvania School Board has made Intelligent Design a part of its science curriculum as an alternative evolutionary theory."

I wasn't actually aware of it, but I chose not to interrupt him.

"We were wondering," he continued, "if you would support a motion to make similar changes to Calgary's public school curriculum."

"Well, public schools do not generally have religion classes," I pointed out.

"No, we would like to include it in the science curriculum."

"Really?"

"Absolutely, sir. Evolution is a theory (and you could actually hear him stress the word) whose time has passed. It is time to consider alternatives." The man told me.

I glanced down at my watch. I decided that I could spare a few minutes, so I said: "I'm afraid I'm not terribly familiar with that theory. Could you please explain the scientific theory of Intelligent Design?"

"Intelligent Design suggests that as opposed to a Big Bang..."

"Wait a minute," I held up my hand, "back up a bit. I thought you were talking about Intelligent Design as an alternative to Evolution. Why are you discussing the Big Bang?"

"Well, Evolutionary theory (and yes, he stressed it again) states that the universe began with the Big Bang and..."

"No it doesn't."

"Excuse me?"

"Evolution is a biological concept; the idea that we developed and became more complex organisms over a process of mutation and propagation of beneficial genes. The Big Bang is a cosmological concept; the idea that all energy of the universe once occupied a single point in space. Two very different concepts. So, are you suggesting that Intelligent Design is an alternative to Evolution, or an alternative to the Big Bang?"

"Both."

"I don't understand. You just said that you wanted to teach it in the science curriculum as an alternative to Evolution. Since I have never read any textbook on evolution which claims to have all the steps between the Big Bang and an Otter, I think it's somewhat silly to be talking about the Big Bang in terms of Evolution."

"But sir, don't you think that students should..."

"Tell you what, how about we start in an area where Evolution actually does make some claims: say, the first appearance of life on earth."

He seemed a little flustered now, and I couldn't help but note that the blonde hadn't spoken since she asked if she could borrow a few minutes of my time, she was just standing there looking pious. "Well, Intelligent Design theory suggests that a supreme being (for some reason, throughout this conversation, he avoided actually mentioning God) created all life on earth approximately 6000 years ago and that life has been unchanged since that time."

"Okay, explain the scientific approach you used to develop this theory," I told him, "start with your falsifiable hypothesis, and move on from there."

"Well, we merely suggested an alternative explanation to the existing data..."

"Oh, so what predictions does Intelligent Design make about future observations?"

"Excuse me?"

"Well, the whole point of a scientific theory is to make reasonable and evidence-supported predictions about what we will observe in the future. That's what makes science a continuous process. Each question we answer raises more questions. So what unanswered questions does Intelligent Design leave?"

"None. It's a complete system which explains everything."

"Then it's not a scientific theory."

"What?"

"The whole point of a scientific theory is that it doesn't have all the answers; it's a jumping off point for people to add to or modify that theory. As such, the theory of evolution has been tested quite possibly more than any theory in scientific history."

"Well the Intelligent Design theory (and notably, he didn't stress the word this time) doesn't have that problem."

I shrugged, "it's not a problem. This is how science is done. We make observations about the world around us, we provide an hypothesis which explains those observations, then we perform experiments to determine if our hypothesis is supported by further data. So, by your own admission, you don't have a scientific theory here; the absolute best that you can claim is that you have a hypothesis, and considering that it requires the action of a Supreme Being, it may well not be falsifiable; and even if it *were* falsifiable, you wouldn't allow it to be falsified. So, I'll tell you what, when you have a falsifiable hypothesis, and you have performed some kind of experimentation which supports that hypothesis, then I'll most definitely support a motion to permit the teaching of intelligent design in science class. Until then, I'm sorry, but no. If you want to have it taught in some kind of comparative religion class, on the other hand, that's a different matter."

"But sir," he held up a hand before I closed the door, "do you really want our children to be taught as fact that we descended from monkeys?"

"Apes."

"Pardon?"

"Apes. We descended from apes, not monkeys; and if you're going to lecture people on biology, you should at the very least know that distinction." (just for the record, yes, I am aware that the claim not that we descend from Apes, but rather from an Ape-like common ancestor, but I figured, judging by the level of scientific knowledge they'd demonstrated, that distinction would likely be lost on them)

"But my point stands, sir. Do you want our children to learn that we descended from apes?"

"You prefer the idea that we descended from dirt?" I shrugged.

"Excuse me?"

"So in addition to an ignorance of the scientific process, biology, and the theory of Evolution, you also lack an understanding of the book of Genesis; the very documentation you're proposing as an alternative?"

"But sir..."

"Thank you for your time. I'm hungry and I need to make dinner." I closed the door.
I stood there for a few minutes to see if they would knock again. They didn't.
I don't know if this was an actual serious motion on their part, or if they were just sending out feelers to see what public opinion was; but I tell you, I was in the absolute best mood for the rest of the evening.