Stories from my life.
From Huben's Wiki
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==My mother, Joanne== | ==My mother, Joanne== | ||
My mother joked that she was a little disappointed that I didn't ask her to walk me to my Harvard extension school courses, holding my hand as she did in Kindergarten. I responded: "Children grow up so quickly nowadays." It tickled her just right, and she roared with laughter. I love when I can play along with and top a jest. | My mother joked that she was a little disappointed that I didn't ask her to walk me to my Harvard extension school courses, holding my hand as she did in Kindergarten. I responded: "Children grow up so quickly nowadays." It tickled her just right, and she roared with laughter. I love when I can play along with and top a jest. | ||
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| + | ==Cornell== | ||
| + | I joined Triangle Fraternity my freshman year. As a pledge, there was expected to be some humorous harassment from the older brothers, and we in turn were expected to pull some pranks. It was a small house, with about 28 members, and everybody put their schedules on their doors. One day I looked at all the schedules, and realized there was a time when EVERYBODY was out of the house. So, armed with my trusty Swiss Army knife, a bag, and some tape for labeling, I removed every doorknob in the house and closed all the doors. As I was walking up the hill with the bag, I said hi to some of the brothers and walked back to my freshman dorm. After a few hours, they realized who must have done it and phoned me to come replace the knobs. A few funny consequences. Our house had the backup transmitter for the campus radio. The main transmitter went down, and they weren't able to get in to the backup. Since the brothers were pissed at the radio guys, this worked out okay. They also tried to punish me the traditional way, by throwing me into the shower. The first time, I simply shut off the water as they threw me in. The second time, I aimed the shower head out at them as they threw me in. The third time, I wrapped the shower head with the shower curtain. The fourth time, they barricaded me in the shower stall with the door to the bathroom. As I was climbing out the top, they flushed me back down with a bucket of water. At various times, I went out pretty much every window that was ground level or had a fire escape, in attempts to evade the shower. | ||
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| + | I had a friend from my home town, Norman, who was a math-CS major: so we called him Nor-Man. One day I went to visit him, and he wasn't in. It occurred to me that the locks on the doors were very old and would be easy to card. So I went in to pull a prank. I knotted a couple of sheets together, tied them to the radiator, and hung them out his 3rd floor window. They only reached down about 5 feet. The I wrote a note: "Dear Norman, I knocked and you didn't answer, so I came in the window. You weren't here, I guess. See you later." When I returned, he was totally confused because how could I have put the sheet in the window from the ground and it wasn't long enough anyway! So I explained to him and his neighbors how easy it was to card the door. The next day when he returned from classes, his neighbors had turned everything in his room upside down, even remounting his posters upside down. | ||
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| + | My first roommate, a guy named Brian, told me that I talked in my sleep. I asked him what I said. He replied "I don't know. I could only make out one word, and it worries me." "What word was that?" "Toxin," he replied. | ||
==First trip to Ecuador, 1987-8== | ==First trip to Ecuador, 1987-8== | ||
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When I was in Ecuador in 1988, I found the Aikido dojo in Quito. I went there, and Mishi Lesser greeted me at the door in English. She asked me where I was from, and I said New York. She asked where in New York, and I said Long Island. She asked where on Long Island, and I said Plainview. She was from there too! We went to the same high school and had most of the same teachers, but she was 3 years ahead of me and so we had never met. She asked me if I knew [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshimitsu_Yamada Yamada sensei], and I said yes. She said "He's coming here in two months to give tests and a demonstration!" Small world! So for the next two months, I assisted in test preparation for the students (I was first kyu, had practiced for 7 years, and was well aware of the USAF test requirements.) When Yamada sensei came, we gave a demonstration that was on all three Ecuadorean television stations, with a live audience of about 3000. I had to be his uke that he threw around, because the Quito instructor was a small woman, and it wouldn't look good for him to throw around somebody much smaller than he was. During the freestyle demonstration, he told me to grab his hair, an attack I had never practiced in Aikido, so I grabbed enthusiastically. He did a cool sankyo technique and threw me. Afterwards, he said to me "You pulled my hair hard!" Oops! | When I was in Ecuador in 1988, I found the Aikido dojo in Quito. I went there, and Mishi Lesser greeted me at the door in English. She asked me where I was from, and I said New York. She asked where in New York, and I said Long Island. She asked where on Long Island, and I said Plainview. She was from there too! We went to the same high school and had most of the same teachers, but she was 3 years ahead of me and so we had never met. She asked me if I knew [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshimitsu_Yamada Yamada sensei], and I said yes. She said "He's coming here in two months to give tests and a demonstration!" Small world! So for the next two months, I assisted in test preparation for the students (I was first kyu, had practiced for 7 years, and was well aware of the USAF test requirements.) When Yamada sensei came, we gave a demonstration that was on all three Ecuadorean television stations, with a live audience of about 3000. I had to be his uke that he threw around, because the Quito instructor was a small woman, and it wouldn't look good for him to throw around somebody much smaller than he was. During the freestyle demonstration, he told me to grab his hair, an attack I had never practiced in Aikido, so I grabbed enthusiastically. He did a cool sankyo technique and threw me. Afterwards, he said to me "You pulled my hair hard!" Oops! | ||
| − | [[File:Kanai.jpeg|right]][https://www.studiorayyan.com Omar Rayyan], an artist | + | [[File:Kanai.jpeg|right]][https://www.studiorayyan.com Omar Rayyan], an artist and Aikidoist from Martha's Vinyard, made a splendid painting of Kanai Sensei throwing a demon on a bridge in irimi nage. He very kindly provided me with a copy. As I was heading to the framing shop with the picture, I walked past a restaurant and saw Kanai sensei and two other senseis eating there. I went in and said "Guess what I've got here." When I showed him the picture, he said: "Oh! That's me throwing you!" Those were the last words he ever said to me: he died the next weekend in Canada of heart failure. |
