Aug 18 2008
Smashing Anger
There is a genius in the world of business. Okay, so there are more than one or two. The one I want to thank for my memory of the day is a business in San Diego. The CNN.com video is titled The Smash Shack. Why is this woman a genius? She charges people to let them smash things. She gets paid money to allow customers to don protective gear and smash plates, glasses, and even picture frames.
This video brought back more than a few memories. No, I do not have a penchant for smashing glassware. I was thinking more along the lines of some major smashing. Smashing that really gets your blood pumping, your muscles aching, and all that anger out. All you need is a sledge hammer and an old junk car. NO! Not the one you use to drive to work each day. I’m talking about one from a junk yard. Preferrably one that is donated. Why donated? Because you do not want to spend money to make money, if you can.
Okay, so where does making money come into this. You will see in a bit. Before you think that I’ve completely lost what little mind I have left, I need to start over at the beginning.
Years ago, I was in a marching band. We needed money. We had a fun day planned. We had all sorts of booths and activities. My dad happened to own a wrecker service and service station. I know, get on with the new information. Sometimes people just never picked up their vehicles way back then. They were wrecked. They may not have had insurance. For whatever reason, the vehicles sometimes stayed in our “lot” for decades. One such car was put to good use. It was donated for our fund raiser.
Why would we want an old junk car that had probably been in a wreck already? Back then, they were still made of metal. It would take some strong muscles and a good sledge hammer to make much of a dent in them. So, my dad hauled the car up to the school. Handed them a sledge hammer. People lined up to pay to smash the car. Smash they did!
The car was slaughtered! I wish I had a photograph to share with you. It was amazing at the damage that these, mostly high school, boys did to this car. It looked like it had been hit by a freight train instead of 16-18 year old boys. They got to use their muscles, the band got the money, and the car, well, it probably didn’t care. At least it was not sitting in the junk yard for those few hours.
Now days, you have more issues to contend with. If you were to try this today, you would have to deal with car titles, clean up, enviromental protection, safety equipment for the participants, and on top of all of that someone somewhere would find some small loop hole to make it illegal or an insurance nightmare. Times sure do change. Not always for the bad, and not always for the good.
If the world had more places such as the San Diego store that allowed people to take out their anger in a controlled environment, would the world be a better place? Would we have less road rage, fewer attacks, less people on trial for murder? We may never know the answer to that question. I sure wish I had a concrete building and a couple million plates to find out.
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~Kelly
http://www.30somethingandsearching.today.com/
Ah, yes, the joy of beating the heck out of an inanimate object. I remember taking a golf-club to a broken-down washing machine in a junkyard when I was 16. When I type it now, it sounds so wrong, but it felt so cathartic at the time.
The Japanese had a similar idea in the 80s - office toys that you could hit, punch and squeeze, often in the shape of your boss.
By the way, I came here from your forum thread.
I went to a New Year 1994’s event at an industrial music night club in Perth where they set a car on fire. An old Datsun 120Y, I think. This was actually much harder than it sounds - Hollywood notwithstanding, cars just don’t burn that well. They had to cover it in home-made napalm stuff (soap and gasoline) and set that alight to get it burning. It was the quintessence of people with way too much time on their hands.
I too have done this at one time or other. There are also times I wish to smash my computer. I am running Windows Vista and they seem to have put it out there before all the bugs were worked out. Take me back to XP Please!