I took a nasty fall last night playing tennis. It was the last set of the night and we were playing a tie breaker. My partner and I had lost every set up to that point, so we really wanted to finish the evening with a win. The courts at the club where we play are very close together and seperated by curtains of netting. It’s possible to hit an angled shot that’s would normally be playable, but impossible to return on these courts because your racquet gets hung up in the curtain.
Our opponents made just such a shot to my side of the court. I chased it down, figuring that if I made just the right chopping stroke, the racquet would push the curtain out of the way before I made contact with the ball and I could return it. It almost worked, I made contact with the ball but I didn’t get enough on it to get it back. Simultaneously, however, my feet were getting tangled in the netting. They stopped, the rest of my body kept going. I tried to extricate my feet to make a recovery but they were hopelessly stuck. Cut to slow motion. “Well,” I says to meself, “it appears that I’m falling. I wonder how badly I’m going to get hurt? I’m too old for this. No, she’s that xanga softball woman.”
My pal Jules, who I think of as Groucho McEnroe, because of his sense of humor and his resemblance to the comic genious, not his tennis game, was watching on the sidelines. I caught his eye as I went down. He looked like he was witnessing a train wreck.
BAM! I hit the court, my hip taking most of the blow, and the rest on my left elbow and knee. Jules was the first one to get to me. I was laying on the court, taking inventory of my injuries. I quickly concluded that it was only a major case of road rash.
I lied there for awhile deciding how much pain I was going to be in and recovering from the jolt of fear I’d experienced. The other players suggested that we just call it a night. I insisted that I could continue and we went on to close out the set in the next three points. I AM SO MACHO!
And the next time I do that, it’s probably good for a broken hip.
Oy. That’s why I stay away from sports, too much risk of personal injury for my tastes.
)
Hope you’re not in too much pain this morning.
(oh, and Rache, you’re welcome to come down here and kick my ass anytime!
CHICK FIGHT!
ouch
Guess there’s still a little bounce in those old bones…. I had a bike crash a few years ago and remember those very same thoughts going through my head I’m too old to fly over the handlebars of my bike….
How are you now? Sometimes you feel worse the next day when all the bruising comes out. Hope you heal soon.
last fall at my team’s soccer practice I was playing goal and made a “totally ego-driven” stop on a point-blank shot by our top scorer. My wrist hurt for two weeks, and of course I had to hide that fact from those high school kids.
Yikes. Feel better.
I hate those slow-motion sequences when you’re about to get hurt. Sometimes they’re more frightening than the injury itself. Hope that’s the case with you.
Actually, I’m hurting pretty bad right now. I was giving a presentation this morning at work and got up to point something out on the AV screen. My movements drew laughter from the audience. Bastards.
falling over is the funniest thing the human body can do in front of other people. no matter how bad it hurts, it’s still funny. therefore, i laugh at you. hahahahah!
I see hip replacement surgery coming, and then we’ll see a walker in no time. Holy hell you’re old.
It’s been so long since I’ve taken a good fall, I think it’s about time I did, just so I know how to handle myself. I’d probably break a hip if it happened to me now. Anyway, the fact that you continued to play tells me that it didn’t turn out so bad. If you have any grotesque bruises, though, be sure to post pics.
Full contact tennis rules. Next time take out an opponent when you do this.
Once I finish my work on a carbon frame biofeedback powered exoskeleton, we’ll never have to worry about this sort of thing again… mwahahaha!
um… reality… ouch. Hope it mends quick. Last time I fell I was playing laser tag out back with Matt. Hit a patch of dollarweed that was slicker’n snot when it was wet. Both my legs shot right out from under me and I landed *whump* flat on my back. I was lucky I didn’t get the wind knocked out of me. Just a soaking wet back of the shirt and pants. ew.
God, you’re just like my son. He’s loved all sports since he could stand up and in high school he did a growth spurt to eventually 6’7″ so fast that his knees were vulnerable. So of course he ripped his cartilage in the right knee freshman year playing football and despite rehab could never play again. It just about killed him. That’s when he took up smoking dope and cutting classes. Cut to years later when he’s settled down a bit, but he’s still out there playing pick-up basketball and crash landing on his shoulder or his ankle. He has so many piled up injuries by now at 35 that he’ll probably die of arthritis in his old age. Nevertheless, if you have be rambunctious, might as well make it tennis – the only civilized sport. I played a lot myself for years but eventually it began to dawn on me that a broken bone now would not mend quite as well as when I was young and bulletproof. Maybe I’ll take up eyebrow raising next.
I thought I was macho too, until I saw the article about the guy that got six nails embedded in his neck, face and skull.