Doing Good Work

by Crazy Ivan

The whole Myachi Master thing comes with a few groovy perks.  We get a pretty cool place to live, an office with a ping pong table in it, a lot of travel and free toys.  I can't think of a job that would be more fun.

Okay... maybe I can think of one.

And as if all that wasn't good enough, we also get to go home everyday knowing that we've made a positive difference in the world.  I've written a few times before about the health benefits of Myachi so I won't spend a lot of time here rehashing the way it helps fight obesity, encourages people to be active, improves flexibility and coordination and increases stamina.  There are also a host of psychological benefits we could talk about, but I'll save that for another day.

Today, I want to talk about the social benefits of Myachi.

It's been on my mind since the event Kid and I did on Wednesday.  As you may know, Kid and I spent Wednesday in Massachusetts at North Attleboro Middle School.  Like thousands of schools across the country, they participate in the American Heart Association's "Hoops for Hearts" program.  The thing that sets North Attleboro apart from the thousands of others is that they raised more than twice as much money as the next highest school.

Here, the student body is seen whooping the rest of the country.

Apparently, they've got that on lock.  For more than a decade this one school has radically outperformed every other school in the country when it comes to raising money for heart disease research.  It's such a big deal that the president of the American Heart Association showed up just to lend his support (and figure out what they were doing so right).

Myachi played a very small role in the whole thing.  See, it's one of those deals where every student who could raise a certain amount of money got to come to this awesome after-party complete with bounce houses, temporary tattoos, fitness competitions, a dunk-the-principal tank and, of course, a couple of Myachi Masters selling Myachis to help raise even more money for the cause.

This was Myachi's third year at the event but it was my first time going.  All the students were asking if Noodles was coming so he must have made a real splash there last year.  I'm afraid to say that I couldn't possibly have been as cool as Noodles (I don't break dance or beat box), but even without Noodles we still had a blast.

Kid Myach was in full blown contest mode for about 3 solid hours.  They'd given us a couple of cases of T-Shirts to give out as contest prizes so Kid was doing long distance trials all afternoon.  Catch a Myachi from 20 feet away, win a T-Shirt.  Pretty good deal right?

Of course, after a while we ran out of T-Shirts (before I could snag one for myself) so then Kid shifted gears to big air contests.  We'd brought along a couple of DVD combo packs so he did a couple tournaments to give those out as well.



And don't worry, by round 3 he made them
go after it one handed.

By the end of the night we'd sold almost 400 Myachis (with the proceeds going, of course, to the American Heart Association) and we'd brought a ton of new talent into the game.  It was a long day and a long drive, but when you're doing good work, the hours just kind of melt together.  By next week I'll have forgotten how sore I was by day's end, but I won't forget the feeling of helping raise money for a good cause.  The good parts of memories always echo longer than the tough parts.