The Best Survival Tool

A contest was held a few years back and people from all across America did what the contest rules said to do: submit your funniest video of your best survival tool. Six months later the judges had themselves a winner. A winner who widely surpassed every other entrant. His name was Wheaty McRipp and he was a fourth-generation woodchopper from West Virginia.

There on my laptop was Wheaty, all five-foot-two of him, standing and talking to the camera.

“I’ll tell ya what the best survival tool is,” Wheaty exclaimed with an air of bravado. “It’s my right hand. This here right hand of mine can chop through anything!” With nary a hint of nonsense, Wheaty violently sliced his right hand through the air. “Imagine what this hand could do in a survival situation!”
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Strutting like a peacock, Wheaty approached a nearby, three-board fence. With his back straight as an arrow and with shoulders over heels, Wheaty raised his right arm, screamed several Japanese words, and swished his right hand straight down, karate-chopping the top board of the wooden fence. Wheaty screamed. This time in English. And he hopped around a good bit, all bent over, holding his right hand. I got to admit, when I observed Wheaty’s face after he hit that board, I started laughing and feeling sorry for Wheaty at the same time. He had apparently broken his best survival tool.

It turned out there was more to the story. Witnesses say once Wheaty painfully packed up his camera gear, he sped off in his car and didn’t get more than 50-yards up the road when he went and hit a telephone pole, head-on. Wheaty emerged from the car, blood dripping all over the place, mumbling, “That will be the last time I drive left-handed.”
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Hopefully one day Wheaty McRip will understand and know that a person’s best survival tool is his or her brain. Because the brain makes decisions. Preferably good decisions. But, who knows, Wheaty McRipp might be the exception to the rule.`

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