Pain

I jammed my right middle finger tonight at volleyball on an over-pass that I tried to block the other team from pounding on us. Turns out the other team pounded the ball straight down on my finger. I shook off the pain and played through, and after two wins and a couple decent hits and blocks I hardly even noticed it anymore.

Sitting in front of the computer, preparing for tonight's 11-minute adventure with an ice pack on my finger after finally popping the thing back into 'proper' place, I got to thinking about pain.

Some of the funniest moments on any funniest home video show or YouTube always end up with a kid inflicting pain on an unsuspecting parent. The penultimate being the crotch shot, of course. So, the pain in my finger and the fond memories of sitting with my family in the early 90s laughing at other people's pain got me thinking about moments when my kids have inflicted pain on me. So far we've blocked most crotch shots.

What I still can't seem to block, though, are the chin shots Mini-Me and the Wubster keep giving me as I'm standing over them, helping them get dressed. They have a knack for raring up at just the right moment so the crown of their head meets my chin with a resounding thud.

While cartoon birds circle my head I swear I can hear them saying, "Ya know, pops, it hurts me more than it hurts you!" I also swear I should've learned by now not to stand over them to help them get dressed. I'll blame that recurring mistake on the numerous chincussions they're giving me.

The other memory that comes back happened just over two years ago this past Sunday. Mini-Me was two and the Wubster was a few months old, and we had all gone over to our neighbors to help them carve their gigantic pumpkins. Mini-Me could care less and spent most of the time coloring at the kids' art desk. The Wubster could care less, too, but I still think he might have ended up inside one of the pumpkins for a photo op.

When it was time to go, I scooped Mini-Me into my arms and he simultaneously whipped around to show me the picture he had drawn. In what was probably actually less than a nano-second, time crawled by as I felt every inch of that piece of paper cross the bridge of my nose, pass between my left eye lids, and scrape across my eye ball. Have you ever had a paper cut? Okay, well, then...have you ever had a paper cut...ON...YOUR...EYE!!!

Time sped back up as I almost dropped the little bugger to the floor and reached for my eye. That was some good pain...definitely wouldn't make Bob Saget's Top Ten, but I'm okay with that...I believe you can read about what happened next with the Bink Fairy in a previous blog. If not, that'll be a story for another 11 minutes.