Hmm. The video says this is the “Alps in 1934.” If I recall correctly, they had a spot of trouble in those parts not long after that. Can’t quite remember the details. Well, no matter. How much trouble could guys wearing leather shorts and armed with pitchforks cause? I wouldn’t be worried about their naval capabilities, either. I mean, what are they gonna do dressed like Sherlock Holmes on a raft.
Awesome wrestling moves at the 1:00 mark. Very wholesome. They look like nice fellows. Besides, as we’ve learned from the Simpsons, no one who speaks German could ever be evil.
Pointing and Laughing at Your Defeated Opponent. It’s the American Way
Don’t even get me started on the lamentations of the women.
If you were really poor, and really Old Skool, you played Battleship with graph paper and a pencil. We did when we were kids. I remember when we got the actual item, the cheap plastic clamshells with a zillion pegs to lose inside. It was glorious.
Play is the school of rules. Games should teach you something. If nothing else, how to be a gracious victor, or an affable loser. But Battleship was a lot more than that. Battleship was a logic game. It taught you to test, verify, and test again. On defense, it taught you to be cagey. It encouraged a kind of understanding of another person’s mind. What would your little brother do with his ships, if he were in your place? My little brother would eat them, but he’s a bad example. You’d put yourself in another person’s mind, to imagine how they would guess at your ship placement. Then you’d put them somewhere else. Your opponent would do the same. It was fun, and frustrating, which is often the same thing when you’re truly engaged in a game or sport.
Then there was the neighbor kid that stuck all his ships in the middle of the board, all touching each other. He didn’t have any strategy, and didn’t care what yours was. He’d just guess, and his guessing was better than your strategy. Once he had you, you were done, because subterfuge doesn’t work on people that don’t use it on their end.
Napoleon would make that guy a general, and you a clerk. Lucky is better than smart. Luck is a kind of smart.
A Young Gentleman Is Never Ashamed To Be Seen With His Sister
This one has something almost all the other examples lack. The kid is smiling.
He’s having fun. It’s kinda depressing looking at the other kids on YouTube, resolutely trying to play some awful metal dirge their father played in a garage band back in the day. They all appear to be getting the Joe Jackson treatment, good and hard, when the camera is off. There’s something about this little fellow that hints that dad doesn’t make him do it. He simply couldn’t keep him out of the practice room, no matter how hard he tried. I could picture him sitting in dad’s lap for a minute and a half, and then grabbing a stick out of his hands. I help. So, good on you, little feller, and good on your dad for letting you, not making you.
I’ll see you and raise you, dad. If he ain’t pulling in folding money by the time he’s ten, he’ll have to settle for a silver.