Black Irish

The title is misleading.
Tough tittie schmitty said the kitty.

This is actually an excerpt from a book I scribbled called "My Life as an Apron"
about my 10 years in Retail.

Things got boring pretty quick.
We had managed to hide pretty much all the evidence at this point and nothing was left to do except work.
Work, as all of us know, is to be avoided at all costs. So I started teaching the boys some Man Games.
My Uncle Hack invented Man Games, and I will glady kick the ass of anyone who says different.
His favorite was a manly feat of strength with a 20 lb sledge hammer and a beer.
It goes like this.
You hold the Beer in your Left hand.
With your right your grab the very end of the handle on a 20 pound sledge. (15 lb min)
You hoist the hammer up to shoulder height and hold your arm straight out from your body.
Without bending your arm or dropping it from below shoulder level you lower the head of the hammer down until it touches your nose.
Without bending your arm or lowering it at all you raise the hammer back up to starting position.
Then you drink the Beer.
Hack could do this all night. Sitting down.
I could do it three times.
Just enough to show the kids, then repeat. Then the "oh Yeah!"
Kelly tried first.
It was not a catostophic failure, but it was a near thing.
After his first try I made them hold their left hand in front of their faces to catch the Hammer when they dropped it.
We didnt have any Beer anyways.
Our Boss, Eric the Black irish came up and saw what we were doing.
Notably not impressed he growled at me to "Put the Hammer back and the rest of you monkeys get back to work".
He walked with me to the end of the store to put the Hammer back.
As soon as we were out of sight of the boys he asked me to show him how to do it. Then he demanded to know the trick.
The trick?
Try a lifetime of manuel labor.
Some trick.
So he had to give it a whril.
I really did try and talk him out of it. Eric the Black Irish was my favorite boss of all save one, and I still felt bad about beating him in the arm-wrestle.
Oh well.
I talked him into going down to the 15 lb from the 20.
This was a very good thing.
He refused to put his hand in front of his face and when his arm gave out he was not as Fast or as lucky as Kelly.
15 pounds of hammer dropped from two feet right between the eyes.
ouch.
His head bouncing of the concrete floor would have hurt too.
had he been concious.
I thought it had killed him.
So I wiped my prints from the hammer and re-racked it
A demonstration, by me :)