You
would think that a couple of really good beatings would have set me
strait on the whole not making fun of kids bigger and stronger than
myself. I am no quitter, unless it is something useful or productive.
Once while playing a dodge ball variant our gym teacher called war
ball I mocked one such bigger strong young man. I was found guilty of
smartassery and sentenced to one broken thumb. I went down thusly, I
was thrown out fairly quickly by a red rubber ball with a nice
parquet kind of pattern that rang a little inside when it slammed
into a nerd's head. I was sitting on the stage steps making fun of
the more elusive and powerful athletes which to an outside observer
seems like a bad move. It pretty quickly seemed that way to an inside
observer as one of the boys on the other team was making what I thought looked like some ballet
like moves to avoid getting hit. I pointed it out and my team laughed
and then I started doing ballet moves and my team laughed some more.
The game actually stopped because the boy I was mocking was closing
the distance towards me quickly but I was oblivious because my back
was turned in a mighty dainty chassé leading to a a rond de jambe en l’air. He was about two feet behind me when he called my name loudly which startled me and I
turned in just enough time to raise my hand to stop the ball he was
throwing, point blank, into my face. My thumb snapped backwards and
made a crunching sound which was orders of magnitude less funny than
the ballet demonstration. It swelled and turned purple and hurt
worse than my thumb had ever hurt. The teacher who was out of the gym
at the time came back in to my howls of pain and got the idea that my
injury had occurred in the normal course of war ball and she took me
to the medical room across from the office and splinted my thumb and
had me wait there until school was over in 15 minutes and then I
walked home. When I got home and showed my mom the swollen purple and
black mess my thumb was she took me to the emergency room and I got a
cast which was awesome because I felt like a cyborg and everyone
wanted to know what happened. The awesome wore off as the cast became
routine and stinky and itchy. In six weeks I got the cast sawed off
and my thumb has always clicked when I squeeze something hard in my
left hand which is to remind me that I should only mock people who
are not present or good at throwing stuff.
