It Was Bound to Happen Eventually

by Crazy Ivan

In my time with the company, I've earned something of a reputation as the "go-to-Myachi-geek" in many matters.  Don't get me wrong, we're all pretty fanatical about our love for the game (it's a requirement of the job), but when it comes to the details, I've always been the resource of choice.  It still cracks me up when Myachi Man will ask me which series a particular sack was in or what a particular trick is called.

Not sure why, but my brain really seems fond of keeping these details.  Myachi Man has the best collection in the company, but when it comes to knowing the names and series, that's my department.  Maverick is the trick-master of the team, no doubt, but when it comes to knowing the names of the tricks, that's my department.

No surprise that with all of this information running around in my head, some stuff is going to spill out.  Somewhere amongst the hundreds of sacks and thousands of tricks, I'm bound to get a neuron crossed from time to time.  On Tuesday, this happened in quite a public and undeniable fashion.

On Tuesday, our trick of the day was the "Grasshopper", a variation of the Flying Fish that is done from a Mantis.  The problem is that I misidentified the move as the "Flying Guppy".

The Flying Guppy is a move, of course.  It's a Flying Fish done from a stall on the forearm.  It's one of the first variations of the Flying Fish that we came up with and it's been a favorite of ours for years.  The Grasshopper came soon after and the cleverness of the name cemented it as a staple trick.  After all, it's a Mantis, but it hops.  Grasshopper is a pretty logical name for it.

But somehow, when I was doing the trick for the trick of the day, I misidentified it in the video and then again when I uploaded it to You-Tube.  I might never have noticed had it not been for the intervention of a couple of hard core maniacs from Jersey who pointed my error out to Kid Myach.

Upon hearing it, I kicked myself (which I'm pretty good at) and jumped on You-Tube to correct my mistake.  I edited the name of the move in the title, description and tags, but I couldn't exactly edit the audio of the video where I clearly refer to the move as the "Flying Guppy".

Because so many Myachi players know the game primarily from online sources, I suspect I've just created a misconception that will last forever.  Some people will call the Grasshopper the Flying Guppy now and despite the editing, I'm sure that there will be confusion here and there for years to come.

In a different set of circumstances I might have simply shrugged off the mistake.  I might have said, "Oh, well, I suppose I just accidentally changed the name of the Grasshopper" and let it go at that.  And I probably would have done that if it hadn't been for two factors:

1. The name "Grasshopper" is so incredibly perfect for that trick and
2. Kid Myach uploaded a popular video almost 2 years ago that showed a number of Flying Fish variations and in the video the Grasshopper is clearly marked, as is the Flying Guppy (though it is misspelled).

So all I can do now is apologize for the mistake and correct (most of) it.  I hope this doesn't turn into something like the "Electron M" fiasco, where a well meaning but misinformed Maniac identified the imaginary Electron M Myachi as the rarest in the world on Yahoo answers.  Despite the fact that this error was (eventually) corrected, it hung out unchallenged for so long that even now, more than a year after the correction, I still get people asking me if I have an "Electron M".

Anyway, sorry for the confusion and thanks to Zach and Rex for keeping track of me.  Stay vigilant... my brain is likely to misfire again in the future.