I've always been extremely risk adverse.
When I played youth baseball I was the kid that would stand at the very back corner of the box. My foremost goal, above even getting a base hit, was not to get hit by the ball. From the very moment I sat behind the wheel of a car, I've always been the safest driver you could possibly imagine. I make sure that my meat is always properly cooked, my vegetables properly washed, and that the lint trap is cleaned out every time I dry a load.
In other words, I'm a complete and utter bore. My obituary will read It's not because he wasn't careful.
That's why in high school it should come as no surprise that I chose the safest sport imaginable to partake in. Well, since my high school didn't have a rowing program and I missed the golf team orientation (straight up got on the yellow bus home), I chose the next best thing: tennis. As it turns out, minus my serve which looks like part of an Indian tribal dance and is drilled down lines and into corners by even the most rudimentary type players, I'm quite good at it. Best of all, it is a sport that you can play all your life and in which, except for the occasional flare up of tennis elbow, that you won't get injured in.
Or so I thought until two weeks ago.
I was playing dubs at the local park and me and my partner had opened up a can and we're dishing out its whoop ass contents when the unthinkable happened. Our opponents weakly shoveled a ball over the net and I sprinted forward to retrieve it. At the last moment my partner cut in front of me to get it and whamo!--when 135 pounds meets 250 pounds the result is never good, and I was quickly in a ton of hurt. I went a few days without visiting the doctor, but when I could no longer sleep or walk or run or breathe or talk or stand upright or sit down I decided it was time to go in. An X-ray revealed a broken rib and torn cartilage in my back nearest that cracked-est of bones. Three weeks for the bone to heal, said the doc, and maybe six months for the cartilage!
In the meantime, there's nothing they can do and I'm in a lot of pain. Did I mention I'm in a LOT of pain? And since I can't exercise and have compensated with an additional two hours of eating each day, I'm starting to pack on pounds. Gulp, I'm starting to look like my dad, which sucks mostly because I can't toss offhand whale jokes at him. Also, I'm becoming one of those pear shaped skinny fat guys. I'm starting to look into MeetUp profiles for shuffleboard and bocce and stamp collecting and stuff, just so I can do something.
I just want to crawl into a creche and hibernate, my ribs banded with high-tech fix-me-up tape, and crawl out when the pain has subsided and I'm me again. Sigh.
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