I am married to a Marine.  My Marine is 150% Marine.  Oooh Rah, Jar-Head, Once a Marine Always a Marine….. A WARRIOR.   Sargeant Richard Michael Allen.

Michael is a veracious reader.  He is usually reading 2 or 3 books at once.  He loves History and War among many other categories.   We have our own mini library in our house, fully categorized.  I can’t recall the girls having to research some famous person in history for a paper where Michael didn’t have some book, knowing exactly where it was in the library of course.  A large section of the library includes Asian culture, specifically around all things Samurai. For years, Michael has talked  about the Samurai, how their method of “management” has been replicated among current warrior cultures such as The Mob.  When he explains it, you can definitely draw the correlation.

One day about 8 years ago, Michael came home all excited.  “I found it” he explains.  “I found a maker of Samurai Swords who make them following the original Japanese method of hand-forging the steel, hand polishing the single-edge sword with a perfect curve”.  Having heard about these swords for years, I know they can literally slice an animal (or human) in two with a single blow and are beautiful when doing so.

Michael was a kid in a candy store.  By the time he had gotten home to tell me about “finding” the maker, he had ordered a sword.  6 – 8 weeks to arrive.  I had forgotten all about it when he arrived home from work one day, sword in hand.  I was making dinner, so he was telling me all about it while I half-paid attention.  I did note that it is a beautiful piece of artwork.  The blade is polished steel, a polished black scabbard, brass or bronze blade collar, ray-skin Same, black braided handle and a small silver Menuki .   It looks very similar to the one displayed in this picture.

Remember this was 8 years ago when Hunter was 7 and Erin was 4.  So you can imagine why I was a bit disturbed as Michael stood in the kitchen, took the sword out of its scabbard and started swinging it around, cutting the air with the blade.  He was “Playing Samurai”.   He stopped when I reminded him that the girls were right there in the family room and he was making me a nervous.

Fast forward a few hours.  The girls have gone to bed.  We have relaxed a bit, had some wine, watched some television and its about time to get to bed…we have work the next morning.   I went up to bed and Michael said he would be along shortly.  He was down stairs long enough for me to get tired waiting and turn off the light.  Just then I hear a noise.  Its a stumble of sorts, then some swift movement like someone trying to catch a falling lamp, then quiet.  It was several minutes later when Michael came down the hall to announce he “was going up the street for a few minutes”.   Typically, “going up the street” was code for ‘I need an energy drink so I’m going to the 7-11’.  It was 10:30 at night, so I knew that couldn’t be it, then it clicked.  “Did you cut yourself with that sword?” I asked.  “Maybe a bit”, he replies.  “I think I need stitches”.  Knowing how sharp those things are (I had seen the video), I asked if it was his leg.  I wanted to be sure we didn’t get an artery or something.  It was his thumb.  Michael drove himself up to the hospital and when he returned about 2am, he informed me that he had a) cut his thumb down to the bone, through the ligaments and everything, and b) would need to go to physical therapy for his thumb to be usable in the future.

By now you are asking yourself, how does one cut their thumb down to the bone like that without having to “strike” it with the sword?  Its a Samurai Sword…..silly!  As Michael tells it, he was returning the sword to its scabbard after fooling around with it for a bit (think kid with new toy) and decided to pull it back out to “check how sharp the blade is”.  He had read the warning, but couldn’t believe it was really THAT sharp.  With the blade up, he simply rested his thumb on the edge of the blade, using little pressure and BOOM!  Blood everywhere!  He said the stumbling around I heard was him trying now to bleed all over the white rug.  (he was successful by the way).

The moral of the story is:  While sometimes the warning on a package seems ridiculous, they are there for a reason – FOLLOW THEM!

In the end, Michael’s thumb healed with the help of a very attractive physical therapist who had to massage and work his thumb and the sword is hanging in a nice presentation box locked away from boys who like to play with toys.

I love you, Michael.   You crack me up.  🙂