Choosing My Jammers

by Crazy Ivan

One of the last things I do before I leave the House of Skills in the morning is pick out my jammers for the day.  Like many of you, I have a pretty substantial collection of Myachis.  I would love to say that I just reach into a pile, grab the 5 or 6 Myachis that my hands land on and stick them in my pockets.

But in reality it's far more complicated than that.  Complicating matters is the fact that I have to find the right balance of jammability.

As we all know, Myachis take a little effort to break in.  Some break in quickly and others break in slowly, but as a general rule, the more you jam with a Myachi, the more jammable it becomes.  This is true for a Zoot Suit (a notoriously tough sack to break in) the same as it is for a Black Beard (the extreme other end of the scale), it's just that one has a much longer timeline than the other.

So if I wanted to make the decision as easy as possible, I'd simply grab the 5 or 6 most broken in Myachis I have in my collection and go from there.  But I can't do that because once a Myachi is really, really broken in, I start worrying about losing it.

And I lose Myachis all the time.  Whether they're claimed by elevator cracks, gutters, protrusions on buildings or the third rail, Myachis just get lost.  You kick them wrong, they start flying away and you watch in painfully slow motion as they move toward a spot you know you'll never get them back from.

Of course, I could solve this dilemma pretty easily too.  I could just take the sacks that have reached that "too-valued-to-use" echelon and set them aside in a special pile that I don't pick from.  Then I could just take the 5 or 6 best jammers that weren't too jammable and use them.

But that doesn't work either.  There are two reasons, of course.  One is that I often find myself in a spot where the "Myachi Mastery" thing to do is to give away a Myachi.  If I run into some cool cats on the train, for example, and they're really good at the game, I'll usually hook one of them up.  If all I've got is my best jammers (or the best ones I'm willing to use), I'd be pretty hesitant to just hand them off.

There's a more important consideration as well, of course.  If all I ever did was used my best jammers, I'd eventually run out of good jammers.  At some point I'd lose all the ones I was willing to lose and wouldn't dare to carry any of the other good jammers with me.  Then I'd wind up with nothing but tough jammers.

The balance I choose is somewhere in between.  I always keep at least one spectacular jammer with me (something like a Yellow Jacket, a Hounds Tooth or a Member Solutions).  That's my peak jammer and it's there just in case I wind up in a tough game of MYACH that I can't afford to lose.  That one stays in my back pocket unless it's absolutely needed.

The other Myachis will be something of a spectrum of jammability.  I'll have a few good jammers (because you never want to teach somebody the game using brand new sacks) and a couple that are on their way.  I'll jam with them throughout the day and inch them ever closer to the promised land of SUMPOY.  This way if I lose a great jammer, at least I've got another one on its way.

Lastly, I'll grab a tough jammer.  When I'm on the train or in line or something, I like to have a Myachi just to fidget with.  I won't necessarily jam with it; sometimes I'll just rub it in my hands or fold it over repeatedly.  This is the first stage in yummification so I always try to have a few that are at that spot.

And yes, that whole process goes through my head every day when I grab my Myachis.  There was a time when I just had 6 or 7 and I simply carried all of them.  The decision was simpler back then, but that doesn't mean it was better.  Sometimes the good old days are more "old" than "good".