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To: Maceman
The first player takes his pocket knife and throws it at the ground, so that it sticks into the ground as close as possible to his own foot

Back in a past century we wharf rats played a game something like this. We started facing each other 8-10 feet apart with our feet spread apart shoulder width or so. Then one would toss his fish knife, which wasn't a pocket knife but rather a 10 inch Old Hickory or a 9 inch Dexter, and toss it to stick in the ground between the other's feet. The other guy would then draw one foot up to the knife and return the favor. Mostly we got so both parties' feet were together before one or the other quit. We played for a quarter or a dollar, depending how much we had made off the tourists on the head boats that day. I caught one right in the top of my right foot and before it registered that it was, indeed, in my foot, I reached down and pulled it up to make my own next toss when Robert yelled,"Okay, you win!" and held out a dollar. Only then did it occur to me that the thing had been standing up in my foot. It passed between the laces of my shoe and left only a wee slit in the tongue. There was a bit of blood on the underside of the tongue and only a trace on my foot. It never did actually hurt.

12 posted on 01/07/2014 4:41:40 AM PST by arthurus (Read Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson ONLINEhttp://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/)
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To: arthurus
Back in a past century we wharf rats played a game something like this. We started facing each other 8-10 feet apart with our feet spread apart shoulder width or so. Then one would toss his fish knife, which wasn't a pocket knife but rather a 10 inch Old Hickory or a 9 inch Dexter, and toss it to stick in the ground between the other's feet. The other guy would then draw one foot up to the knife and return the favor. Mostly we got so both parties' feet were together before one or the other quit. We played for a quarter or a dollar, depending how much we had made off the tourists on the head boats that day. I caught one right in the top of my right foot and before it registered that it was, indeed, in my foot, I reached down and pulled it up to make my own next toss when Robert yelled,"Okay, you win!" and held out a dollar. Only then did it occur to me that the thing had been standing up in my foot. It passed between the laces of my shoe and left only a wee slit in the tongue. There was a bit of blood on the underside of the tongue and only a trace on my foot. It never did actually hurt.

We called this game "DARE." The game was more about losing than winning: The person throwing the knife lost if he tossed the knife so that it stuck outside the other person's feet or if it hit the other person. The other person lost if he bailed out of position before the knife stuck. Thus, the goal was to toss the knife so that it stuck in the ground as close as possible to the inside of the opponent's foot without hitting him in the hopes that the opponent would bail out of position to avoid getting hit with the knife.

19 posted on 01/07/2014 5:06:16 AM PST by Labyrinthos
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