#7 Walking the Plank

After a hard day spent raping, pillage, and generally swashbuckling, there’s something anticlimactic in the act of simply pushing a scurvy dog off the side of a boat. Fortunately, as world-renowned white people from Gilbert and Sullivan to Gena Davis and Geoffrey Rush have taught us, any Jolly Roger-waving privateer worth his weight in gold dubloons likes few things in the world more than putting on a show.

The ritual of plank walking, fortunately, much like the bygone days of public square hangings and today’s ever-popular phenomenon of reality programming, marries the ever-popular phenomenon of bloodlust with the desire for high quality entertainment.

A single board is extended over the edge of a ship. The victim is then forced to walk its length, oft through the gentle prodding of large sharp pieces of metal. The act of walking the plank is considered to be a form of psychological torture, which, admittedly sucks rather a lot, but ultimately pales in comparison to the act of being eaten by lots and lots of sharks, which generally occurs soon thereafter.

Walking the plank has generally fallen out of favor amongst white people, largely replaced by such methods of punishment as stern talkings to, knowing sighs, shameful head shaking, and time outs while the offending party thinks about what he or she had done.