Spit like a baseball player

Larry Moffitt
March 28, 2011

Life is complex.

I have a daughter, Sunhwa, who is 17 years old. She home schools and washes hair at Hair By Elle to earn bucks. I taught her how to chop firewood. The trick is to hit the log in the very same place whack after whack. This "fatigues" the wood, causes internal disunity within the log and eventually causes it to split. First a little, and then wide open. Sunhwa has been chopping wood with me for a couple years and is better at it than any of our other kids, with the exception of David who has sheer muscle going for him. Sunhwa is patient, she is willing to work at it and pay the dues until the log surrenders.

Yesterday we chopped wood and I taught her how to spit like a baseball player. I told her, "We can find you a nice husband, but if you want to win his heart you need to know how to spit like a ball player." Being able to do this completes the atmosphere, rounds out the whole package of the wood chopping experience. It takes some time to learn how to pull all that saliva together and hock a loogie the right way. I told her that giggling ruins it.

Taeko the Wife came out to watch us chop. Sunhwa put on the big leather work gloves, grabbed the wood maul, cleared her throat, brought up the stuff and jettisoned a glorious wad. Then she stepped up and split the log with one sharp, satisfying WHACK!

Taeko said, "Oh my God!" turned and walked back to the house.

"Honey," I called after her. "You want me to teach you how to spit like a baseball player?"

"No thank you," she said.

<sigh> It's never easy when you're trying to improve the world one person at a time.