Study Breaking

"WHAT NEXT! What next!" Austin was jumping up and down in destructive glee, a two-inch, 27 ounce steel chrome sizing ball oscillating dangerously in his sweaty palm. All around him in a happy cornucopia of wanton destruction lay the mangled, twisted remains of a tin of cookies, a beer can, a memo board, a squash racket, a small toaster oven and the Sunday Times.

Austin, Dave and I had taken the term "study break" to its logical extreme and were now surrounded by the wreckage. Though we are ordinarily passive human beings, hours of focused mental exertion had exploded into random physical destruction. We were breaking apart our room.

The steel sizing ball which had become our weapon was the inexplicable product of a government surplus catalogue. Austin, a veteran consumer of the obscure, has an obsession for buying anything advertised with exclamation points--"Two-inch diameter! 27 ounces!" After three intense hours of academic grundgework--a feat of concentration made more impressive by the blaring conditions forced on us by a merciless stereo--Dave had conceived of a use for the Steel Chrome Sizing Ball. "Boys," he had said, "it's time to relax."

Our carpet, battered and bruised by forces beyond its comprehension, awaited the next impact of our mini-wrecking ball. Tiny punctures in its rayon skin were mute testimonials to the kinetic fusion of a warped student wielding two pounds of round, steel government surplus.

DAVE, THE MOST grotesquely warped of our trio, made a grab for the steel ball and disappeared down the hallway, yelling something about Bowling for Doorknobs. Austin and I exchanged glances of abject terror. We knew about Dave's fetish for doors. One door in particular. "Daaaaaaaaave!"

It was too late. Reverberations of steel on linoleum echoed off Dave's mad cackle, as the spheroid struggled down the hallway, fighting for maximum velocity. Bouncing like a racquetball from hell it finally impacted, expressing its tensile strength in an ugly, permanent scar on our tutor's door.

A hush fell upon the hallway. Slowly, slowly, the scarred door swung open. Dave stood still, like a slasher-flick teenybopper about to get the axe. Destruction had ceased to be a good thing.

BUT IT HAD been for awhile. Kept within limits, wanton violence is a healthy and useful alternative study break. It exercises the body and clears the mind. Correctly applied, violence satisfies the primal needs of almost every form of homo academicus. Are you a budding Marxist? Destruction rids your suite of useless capitalist acquisitions.

Philosophical? Through violence, come closer to the wholesome anarchy of Rousseau's Nature. Perhaps not Noble, but certainly Savage.

Gov jock? Study the effects of your own model of tyranny on a tin of cookies. If lit is your thing, experience deconstruction in a concrete way.

More traditionally English? Feel the freedom of expression granted by blunt objects. And what physics major could resist observing the highspeed impact of one object with another?

The list could go on. But I tire of creation. Just remember, David Letterman has legitimized playful destruction on national television--playing with his hydraulic steam compactor, dropping things off five story buildings. So don't feel timid: take heart, go forth and destroy.