The other night my friend and I were watching the relatively unpopular move Four Rooms. He was never really up on Alfred Hitchcock but he was definitely a fan of Quentin Tarantino. The fourth part of the movie was a redo of a short story by Roald Dahl called “The Man from the South” which was then turned into Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man from Rio” starring Peter Lorre and Steve McQueen. The plot of the movie was simply centered around; two men making a bet on New Year’s Eve competing for a convertible and a finger. If one of them could light the lighter ten times without faltering then he would win the car. If he couldn’t though; he’d have to give up his little finger. It was my friend’s idea to copy the bet except using his tungsten ring.
The insanity started after we watched the movie several times. My friend is and easily influenced individual as well as a gambling man. We started talking about the ring on his finger after one of these viewings. He claimed that his men’s tungsten wedding band was totally indestructible. It allegedly tops out the ranking for hardness on Mohs scale of hardness. He bought it believing it would survive any amount of brute force inflicted upon it.
Taking him up on his presumptions on tungsten rings and after just watching Four Rooms we were both thinking the same thing. I knew it was madness. How could we even fancy the idea? Well after having a few drinks in us we devised the terms of the bet.
We talked about it for a good hour before we came to the agreement. I owned an expensive gold ring and he had his tungsten. Since he believed that his ring was completely unable to be broken we concluded that if I could smack the ring with a hammer ten times while it was still on his finger without it breaking he’d win my gold ring. On the other hand though if the ring were to break he would lose his wedding ring, hurt his finger and need to explain things to his wife.
We set everything up just like in the movie. A hammer, a block of wood, a bucket of ice and of course his tungsten ring. I’m not as much of a betting man as my friend so I only take bets I know I’m going to win. I gave him one last chance to back out but he refuse and so we commenced. I raised the hammer far up over my head, hesitated for a split moment as we stared each other in the eyes and came down with full force. Needless to say, he had a lot of explaining to do to his wife after it completely shattered with that one blow.
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