Vacationing With a Myachi Master

by Crazy Ivan


As many of you know, I recently celebrated my 35th birthday.  To mark the event, Pinky and I drove to a little place near Mystic, Connecticut and spent a few days relaxing away from the House of Skills and the daily grind of the office.

We timed it pretty well.  We left town on Saturday afternoon and came back on a Monday afternoon so there wouldn't be a lot of traffic coming and going from the city.  It worked like a charm and we actually made our destination almost an hour quicker than I'd expected.

Our timing would have been perfect had it not been for the bus that had arrived about 2 minutes before us.

We were mad early and ready to start our romantic getaway, but first we had to wait for 47 other people to check in.  They were all part of some huge wedding party and at least half of them were old enough to need everything repeated to them several times.

So I did what any Myachi Master would do when presented with a long wait: I pulled out a Myachi... my Yellow Jacket to be exact.

I jammed a little bit and before long half of the wedding guests were watching and tossing me questions about this mesmerizing little thing bouncing around my hands and feet.  I scanned the crowd and found a couple athletic looking types.  I tossed them a couple of Myachis and started going over the basics with them.

Meanwhile the poor hotel clerk is swamped in check-ins and I'm steadily distracting her from her work.  She forgives me, of course, since the sudden burst of Myachi Mania is keeping everyone from getting frustrated with the wait.

Pinky and I got to the counter almost twenty minutes after we walked in and by then the chaotic lobby had grown quiet.  The clerk predictably asked me about the Myachi so I started teaching her how to play and before long I was also teaching the Maitre D at their restaurant and the manager that had seen it on the security camera in his office.

Eventually we got around to checking in but from that point forward every time I saw an employee of the hotel they would say "Hey, are you the Myachi guy?" or "Are you the guy with those hand hackey sacks?"

I suppose that would have made for a weird question if the answer had been no.  It would have been a pretty awkward weekend had there been another skinny dude in his thirties with a pony tail at the hotel that weekend.

By the time we left I'd given away half a dozen Myachis.  I'd also used 3 of them as tips for our waitress one night and the cleaning ladies but I don't count that as "giving them away" (don't worry, I gave them money too).  I'd also started an impromptu Myachi class at the Mystic Aquarium over the weekend and the dude working at the gas station along the way.

It took a little while for Pinky to get used to it, but this happens any time we go anywhere.  Every vacation we've gone on in the last 7 years has involved me teaching half the people we meet how to play Myachi.  It's a great ice breaker and it usually gets you great service at hotels and restaurants but even if it didn't I'd still do it.  The truth is that I can't help it.  It's too ingrained for me to stop at this point.

So let me close on a little quip that Pinky pointed out on the drive home this afternoon.  "Most people take vacations to get away from their jobs," she said, "but you just go on vacation so you can do your job in a different place."

Did I mention that I really love my job?

And my wife?