Bring the pain

Always nice to come up with a new and exciting way to injure myself.

Anyone who has known me for a while knows that I can injure myself in the most unorthodox ways, including:

1. Shooting myself in the hand with a BB gun

2. Extending a ladder only to have a nest of fire ants fall on my head

3. Breaking my hand on my headboard in my sleep

4. Smashing my shoulder while trying to "ski" down a very wet, steep road

5. Having a pet snake escape from his cage and then bite my finger while I tried to retrieve him from under a shelf, and having to get my mother to pry his mouth open with a screwdriver while the snake did its level best to wrap itself around the shelf.

So, in short, if there is a moronic injury to have, I'll get it. I figured at 34 years old, I was finally beyond some of the dumber ways of injuring myself. Sounds like a challenge, huh?

I was in the pool with my kids, and we were having a big ol' time. My daughter, Allie, was very excited because she had finally learned how to do handstands and underwater somersaults.

I was in the pool with her, watching her do her handstands, somersaults, and occasional gulping of water when she stopped the somersault while upside down.

She asked me how many somersaults I could do underwater. "Ten," I told her confidently.

Let's just say that at about spin number eight, I (a) had roughly a third of the pool in my nose and (b) had no idea which way was up, which is always a good thing in the pool. (Just to let you know, my wife was there, so an adult was present.)

"So," you say, "that doesn't sound like a bad injury, Mike!" And I say you are right. Because that was not the injury. That just illustrates to you that my judgment had already been turned off.

The injury occurred a while later. Allie was again doing handstands, and I asked her how high she could push herself out of the water. She looked at me with a puzzled look on her face, and asked what I meant. I told her that when she was underwater on her hands, she should do what amounted to a vertical push-up and see just how far out of the water she could push herself. Still a blank stare.

It was time to show her. "Watch," I said. I went underwater and into a handstand. As I lowered myself to the bottom, I prepared to push off, springing myself out of the water, upside down. No, I wasn't expecting to spring fully out of the water, but figured with a good push I could get my legs out, and maybe a little ways past the waist.

As I prepared to push off, I felt myself drifting back a little, so I adjusted my hands underneath me to make sure I was completely vertical. I did this a few more times, just to steady myself, and I was ready.

With a mighty push, I launched myself as hard as I could. And about one second later is when I had about as close to a blackout from pain as I recall. During my shifting, I had drifted toward the side and in brilliant fashion I launched myself up over the side of the pool, and my legs came crashing down on the concrete.

I hit the concrete just above my knees. I had a feeling similar to the one when I broke my ribs playing flag football. (You know how they say some athletes "leave it all on the field"? I left it ALL on the field that day.)

My wife had a look of horror on her face, and she started immediately apologizing to me. As I hobbled around, stifling the primal vocabulary trying to erupt from me, I said through clenched teeth, "What are you sorry for?"

Apparently, my wife sorta saw the whole thing unfold, and felt as though there was something she could have done from the other side of the pool.

Perhaps she could have shot some Aquaman-style rings at me, except that rather than calling fish, these would have somehow made me not an idiot. She later told me that she should have put a stop to it when I first thought of trying it, because she should have known that it would have played out like that. I concur.

So my legs felt GREAT for the next couple of days. When I woke up the next morning, it was a real blast getting out of bed. My wife asked me how my legs felt. "They feel like someone hit me with a concrete pool deck."

Pretty much everything I did hurt. I tried to kneel down to help my son get his bike helmet. I considered just staying knelt for the rest of the day. When I was sitting on the couch later and Parker jumped in my lap, he seemed quite perplexed by the tiny little whimpers I was letting out.

By the next day, the bruises had started developing quite nicely. A true badge of dishonor. The pain has pretty much gone away at this point, and I am guessing I will not have any lasting damage, save for the damage to my pride. Hopefully, this will be the last moronic injury I sustain. Assuming my wife stops me in time.

Contact Michael Gibbons at mgibbons