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While growing up, our town would celebrate the 4th of July in grand style. A pancake breakfast, parade, fireworks, and an exciting midway. There were a few inflatable attractions to partake. A basketball dunking contest where we connected to military recruits by bungee cord. After beating one of them, I was offered to a spot to join them which I politely declined. Next was another bungee one. Two people start attached to them with vests and they run as fast/strong as possible to place a beanie at the end of a Velcro track. Now these two were fun, but nothing beat the last one. An inflatable small arena was set up with two pedestal/platforms. Each person received a helmet and a cushioned staff to knock their opponents off.

Now, back then I was quite physically fit and still keeping up with my karate. These two factors made a marathon of others trying to defeat me. To the point where people paid me to rumble with them. Of course, I couldn’t employ the same strategies over and over again… That would be predictable and easy to counter. This led to an epic few matches since I didn’t want them to predict anything. One of my first moments, was a bout where the match wasn’t going anywhere. There needed to be a change to upset the rhythm of the fight. So, I jumped on the other person’s pedestal and pushed them off. They were sooooo annoyed and surprised by the move while trying to get the ref to side with them. However, the rule was just to stay on a pedestal and knock your opponent off. The next one was hilarious. I’d gone a few rounds with the same opponent who was annoyed at how I kept winning. They finally managed to get the staff out of my hand. I smirked at him as he tried to bat me off with a hard swing. The problem was when someone goes for a heavy attack, it was quite easy to counter it. Watching the path, I grabbed the staff on impact and pulled my opponent off the pedestal. They were shocked but gave me a high five for the tactic. At one point, I was getting really tired from the constant matches one after another. So, as they were preparing to steady themselves at the beginning of the bout, I threw the staff and knocked them off because they tried to catch it instead of blocking it. I’m very unsure what their mindset was at that moment. Made me laugh a bit too as I helped them up. However, all of these paled in comparison to my favorite moment in the ring. Her I was facing off with one of my friends. We’d done this a couple times now, and he improved after each one. So much so, he blocked every strike I gave him as I did the same. Finally, I saw an opening as our two strikes met. I slid my hand down his weapon and grabbed one of the handles. In an effort to stay on, he let go of his staff and just looked at me. I gave them a twirl as I readied myself to strike again. However, he looked at me, their hands, back at me, then jumped off the pedestal themselves. I laughed so hard I needed to sit down… Such fun times back in the day. For the record, I was undefeated.