Fence-ninja win!

SEATTLE—Seattle police say a man who thought he was a ninja was impaled on a metal fence when he tried to leap over it. An officer who was looking for an assault victim Monday night heard the man screaming for help. Police spokeswoman Renee Witt wrote in a department website posting that officers thought the man might have been involved in the reported assault, but he insisted he was just a ninja trying to clear a 1.5-metre-tall fence. Witt says the man was “overconfident in his abilities,” and that alcohol likely played a role. Police supported him to prevent further injuries until medics arrived and took him to a hospital.

—Associated Press

I’m not sure which is sadder, the fact that a grown man thought he was a covert agent from 14th century feudal Japan, or the fact that I think this is the awesomest story ever read by human eyeballs.

I mean, no, it’s not awesome that the guy impaled himself on a fence; but it is awesome that this man not only believed he was a ninja; he actually did something about it.

Think of it this way: How often do you imagine being someone else? If you’re a neurotic self-doubting nervous-Nancy headcase like me, the answer is: all the effing time. Especially when I watch movies. I remember as a kid, watching Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder and going, “Man, I wanna take up competitive car racing!” then watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and thinking, “Man, I wanna be an astronaut.” Even a few years ago, when I saw Brokeback Mountain, I thought, “Man, I should buy an old truck.”

But wanting to be a ninja holds a special place in my heart. As a child of the ’80s, I grew up when the ninja movie genre was at an all-time high. I remember my video store having an entire section dedicated to the straight-to-video martial arts b-films that seemed to be churned out of some remote suburb of Hollywood. There were movies with titles like American Ninja, Enter the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja and Ninja III: The Domination. As a young Asian male living in what felt like the whitest suburb in the universe, seeing a slanty-eyed guy in pajamas kicking the shit out of white dudes in suits felt empowering.

My cousin taught me how to turn a t-shirt into a full ninja hood and I learned how to fold two pieces of paper into a throwing star, which could then be customized with steel nails, and then whipped into trees—kind of like origami but way more eye-pokingly dangerous. Much like Cato in The Pink Panther movies, my brother and I would take turns trying to ninja-surprise each other, hiding in trees and cupboards scaring the crap out of each other and unsuspecting passersby. I would buy martial arts magazines and pretended to study the moves, but mostly just ogled the catalogue of ninja paraphernalia advertised within: spiky claws, smoke bombs that would help you disappear and weird boots with split-toes that made you look like an alien. I wanted it all.

In the late ’80s, as the craze waned, film houses were running out of fresh ninja ideas and started putting out what seemed like weird surreal pseudo-parodies of the genre. Nine Deaths of the Ninja, Cobra vs. Ninja, Mafia vs. Ninja, Full Metal Ninja… it all started sounding vaguely desperate, like the later Ernest franchise (what would be next, Ninja Goes to Camp, Ninja Scared Stupid and Ninja Saves Christmas?).

This sense of desperation, coupled with the fact that my consumption of martial arts films was severely limited after almost kicking my mom in the face, led eventually to my giving up on my ninja passions. Or maybe I just grew up. I realized I would never be a real ninja. I could read the magazines and learn “HOW TO BREAK A MAN’S ARM WITH ONLY TWO FINGERS!” and buy all the nunchucks and staffs with swords hidden in them and watch all the movies. But I’m not Japanese, I would probably never have to disappear in a puff of smoke and I would probably never need the kind of skills it takes to travel to the Philippines and battle a dangerous land grabber who wants my war-buddy’s property. Maybe I just grew up and moved on. Maybe I focused on more realistic goals, like starting a band and not staying a virgin until I was 35.

But I kind of miss it. Maybe we need more people like the fence-ninja to remind us that we all have dreams and that we should be out there living them instead of staying home sober, not in our pajamas and not impaled on a fence.

RIFF-RAFF@SYMPATICO.CA