I mentioned on another thread that I used to be an avid fencer. The sport, of course, was derived from serious matters centuries ago, when sometimes one's life could depend upon one's skill in handling a rapier (16th and 17th centuries) or an elegant but deadly small-sword (18th century). Gentlemen would often spent half a day at the salle d'armes, taking a lesson from the maitre d'armes in offense and defence with the sword, then spending a couple of hours bouting with other gentlemen, partly in an effort to perfect their technique, but often just for the sport of it. It was this sort of thing from which modern art and sport of fencing was derived.

Although the term was never used in relation to fencing until a few decades ago, it is a martial art, and it demands the same sort of discipline, mental focus, and self control as the Asian martial arts.

Many hours I used to spend dressed in my fencing whites, peering intently through the wire mesh of a fencing mask, foil, épée, or saber in my gloved hand, going at it hammer and tongs with other fencers, invariably good friends because we shared the same passion for the sport. The click and slither of slender blades against each other, the stamping of feet, and the shouts of "Et la!" and "Touché!" are sheer music!

To the onlooker unacquainted with the art, it undoubtedly looked as if we were trying to kill each other. In fact, friend of my youth Alan Randall and I were fencing one afternoon in a nearby park (in our imaginations, recreating the days when gentlemen might settle an "affair of honor" in the Bois de Boulogne just outside of Paris) when a police car cruising through screeched to a halt and two policemen leaped out and dashed over to us, convinced that we were bent on doing murder to each other—fight with swords, ye gods! We let them examine our weapons (slender, flexible steel blades with points like nail-heads which we padded with a bit of adhesive tape) and our wire mesh masks and padded jackets, and assured them that we were good friends engaging in a perfectly safe sport. They stayed for awhile and watched us, rather fascinated as we thrusted, parried, lunged, et al, then eventually left us to our recreation.

An evening of swordplay at the YMCA or the Washington Athletic Club in Seattle or Hans Halberstadt's salle d'armes in San Francisco was almost invariably followed by adjourning to the nearest alehouse to replace the moisture we had sweated out and share convivial good-fellowship with the guys and gals we had spent the past couple of hours trying (in our imaginations) to shish-kabob on modern (blunted) replicas of the elegant, deadly weapons that the aristocracy of two or three centuries ago wore as an essential part of their wardrobe. A spirited, healthy, and enjoyable way to experience a bit of history.

Quite a bit of verbal fencing goes on here on Mudcat, and sometimes it gets vigorous to the point where an onlooker might misunderstand what is really going on. As long as one does it in the spirit of sport—and in the spirit (even if, because of distances, it is not actually possible) of following the discourse by lifting a tall and foamy with one's former adversaries, then one gets one's exercise, hones one's skills, and all is well.

My only real quarrel is with the kind of person who (to change the analogy from fencing) comes into a conference where dignified people are discussing serious issues, and whose only contribution to the discussion is to drop his pants and take a dump in the middle of the conference table.

You know the type.

Don Firth

". . . and as I end the refrain, thrust home!"
                               —Cyrano de Bergerac