To Live and Die by the Blade—A Quarantine Saga

It started out as a bit: thinking about what I’d do with the CERB. Why not a sword?

Stage one: just a joke. Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny to be one of those guys who “studies the blade.” I mean, I couldn’t seriously do it, that would be such a waste of money, and they are probably super expensive anyways.

Stage two: research. Googling “sword sharp real” and “Canada sharp sword” and seeing what comes up. I love doing research in general, and I haven’t really had anything to look into, so I did a little bit of a dive into the forums. Turns out there is a thing called “HEMA” (Historical European Martial Arts) so that grants some legitimacy. Looking into my options, I’ve gotta think there’s not going to be anyone with serious armor that I’ll need to puncture, so I’ll probably want some kind of curved slashing blade, weighted at the tip. I don’t want a cavalry saber associated with the U.S. and in particular I have to make sure there’s no Confederate connection here. I narrowed it down to three options under $300: Gladius, Cutlass, no, this is it, this is my baby: a Falchion.

Stage three: fantasy. Okay, so obviously this is just me being silly, but it would be cool. Just having a razor sharp blade to show to someone would be cool. And hey, I’m trying to increase my arm strength, what better way than swinging a rod of solid steel.

Stage four, haha, what a crazy rabbit hole. That was fun but you are broke and who knows where the economy is going. Lol, can you imagine though?

Stage five: “but maybe” / rationalization. You know what? If I actually commit to doing some training, it’s still an absolutely crazy purchase, but I’m not gonna go bankrupt and it’s more functional than other impulse buy options. Plus, here’s the thing. The world is going crazy. Things will probably get better, but what if they don’t? What if you actually end up in a Mad Max scenario? If you end up in that world, you deserve a sword for putting up with that kind of trauma and tragedy. Obviously it’s not a gun, but being the guy who has a sword he kinda knows how to use is going to have an advantage over completely unprepared people! And look, it’s not gonna happen, but you will get a story out of it, some exercise, and you’ll have a decorative item to put on your mantlepiece with a great story of a crazy time.

Stage six is where I was this past week. “Maybe I’ll actually do this.” I emailed the people and asked if I could drive and do a dead drop pick-up to avoid shipping costs. As long as I do the drive in a straight shot it’s not great but it’s not absolutely heinous. I’ll have to train in secret, the key with these things is to just do it and then bring it up nonchalantly a good while later.

Stage seven—The Fever—was this morning, when I got caught up on the news. I had been avoiding it, and I found the rumblings of re-opening incredibly troubling. My catastrophic and anxious instincts went into overdrive. I basically had my credit card out. I decided to do a little bit more research to compare single edge and double-edged weapons. Which brought me to

Stage eight: reality/sanity/the come-down. This is what you will look like:

 

 

With that, I was back to reality. I watched some fencing, which looks impressively fast, and some HEMA, which looked depressingly bush-league, and I knew the dream was dead. Probably best to just make a nice heavy mace anyways, if “shit really does go down”.