About Captain Ola - The Dev Pirate Method

I’ve always been a pirate. I’ve known no other life.

The telling of tall tales, have spellbound me from boyhood. It sill does.

My father captained on a sailing ship in the harbour downtown Oslo and I met plenty of pirates there. You know, tattos, a gold tooth glinting from a piraty grin. If I saw a pirate I HAD to chat. The tales they told … of derring-do, guts and glory …

After all those tall tales my first blood-in-the-water experience came as no shock. I was 12 and I watched my dad patch up that bleeding sailor with duct tape after the fight.

Every time I’m at the downtown harbour I see that sailing ship where the fight started and even it still makes me smile. The ship’s shape is like a boy’s dream of a pirate ship. A big box on the butt end. Big windows with yellow grilles.

We were up on the box in the summer sunshine, my father and I. Looking down on a deck-full of raucous crewmen from several neighbouring ships. A handful of sailors were jumping into the sea. Whooping and splashing, but most of the party goers were downing the free drinks and shouting over the loud music.

A wet sailor climbed up to us on the aft deck. Not a tall dude, but we could see his muscles. And he was wide. His grin was also wide. He pointed at the man beside me. I looked up. And up. THIS was a big man, he smiled back at the smaller man.

“YOU need a bath.” Said the little guy still pointing and I just KNEW they’d fight. I wasn’t fighting daily at school myself, but it was a close thing most weeks. I had developed an instinct for a coming fight, a sort of tingle. I remember feeling the tingle and thinking “You’ve got NO chance little man.”

The big guy spread his feet and crouched low. My father pulled me away by my arm. A few slaps of wet feet and the two men had magically moved to the hip high fence. A quick scuffle and the big man was airborn, outside the fence. The big man’s long arm snaked out and grasped the back of the head of the smaller man. Two men spun in the air like thrown toys.

I heard the tinkle of glass, but I have no memory of the foot crashing through the big window with yellow grilles below us. I quess I wasn’t fast enough to the railing to see, probably my father still held my arm. But the smaller man swimming, THAT I saw. Swimming calmly, blood spurting out his right ankle in clouds. I remember thinking of sharks, but no sharks came.

When the bleeding sailor climbed on deck my father stood ready with the duct tape. Somebody killed the music. Nobody made a sound. I was still up on the aft deck, as I was told to. Dad just wrapped the duct tape around and around the sailor’s lower leg, then the ankle and then the heel. Saying into the silence “Not too tight, noot too loose.”

The injured sailor was still smiling, what a trouper! The big guy was NOT smiling. Soon I could see the two men together in the rubber dinghy on their way to the emergency room. By then the music was back on, along with shouting of the party goers.