Busted

This may slow me down a little folks. Yesterday evening I'm quite sure I broke the top segment of my left index finger.

I was rough-housing with my three-year old son, and he jumped up to run in the other room. His first step (and he's got an explosive first step, I see Notre Dame in his future) was right on my hand. The audible crack and the enormous swelling remind me of when I fractured the same segment of my right middle finger saluting Bill Clinton.

Nah, I got it caught in someone's shirt playing flag football. But Clinton-induced fatigue might have had something to do with it. Repetitive motion injuries, you know.

Anyway, the odd angle will be my left index's mark forever more. Funny how much you use a thing like your left index finger and don't even realize it until it hurts to do so.

DISCLAIMER: If you've got a weak stomach for reading about injuries stop here.

But this finger deal isn't that bad compared to an injury I had probably seven years ago...

I was in the gym, and was sitting on a flat bench getting ready to do a set of dumbbell flys. I had the weights resting on my thighs, leaning against each other, and decided I'd let go with my left hand to adjust my portable CD player. As you might have guessed by now, I became unbalanced, and the left weight slid down and smashed my right thumb between the handle of the right weight and the cast iron part of the left weight. Basically, I took a 60 pound piece of iron and a solid steel handle, and made a right thumb sandwich out of those.

I immediately put the weights back and returned to my apartment (I was living high-rise style, before kids came along). By this point, I'm bleeding more than a little, and it feels like my whole hand was throbbing. Which is how it felt for three days - nothing was able to chase that pain away. Of course I lost the nail, but it grew back nicely. Point is, imagine being right handed and not being able to use your right hand because the thumb has been tenderized. I struggled for a few days with that.

OK, enough injury stories for now. Unless you've got a good one, in which case, let 'er fly as my buddy Webster might say.