On a mid-October visit with my daughter and her family, my son-in-law began recounting stories from a former construction job. He spoke of end-of-day contests—monkey-bar style races, for example, in which construction workers would race across the trusses of a building using hammers instead of the hands, which lasted until one guy slipped and concussed himself with the hammer.
My friend John, a former concrete laborer, added his tale about the time a chunk of cement fell and whacked him in the head, sending him to the emergency room with blood streaming down his face.
I chipped in with tales from my long-ago military school days, when fights broke out at a misspoken insult and where battles using bent paperclips and rubber bands for slings could leave a welt like a bee sting on the skin of the victim. Such escapades apparently still exist in a few places, as my teenage grandson, visiting from his all-male boarding school, also recounted stories of dorm fights and concussions….