Did you ever have the feeling that you are a bit accident prone or, at the very least, a bit clumsy?
You leave a cup of tea or coffee on the table and when you turn to do something, you knock the cup over and the liquid goes all over the place. It gets all over a book you were reading or a report you were working on.
Maybe you are getting into the car and you hit yourself on the forehead with the door.
You could be getting something from the bottom shelf of the hallway closet and when you are getting up, you hit your melon on the shelf above leaving a nice scrape down your head.
All these things and more have happened to me, and it seems sometimes they happen in a bunch, then none for a while, then another bunch.
I mention this because at the moment I am sporting a black eye. Well, right now it is a wonderful shade of green, purple and yellow. I tell people my wife beat me because I didn't do the dishes, but they know she would have to get the step ladder out and climb to the top rung to be able to belt me in the head.
The truth is I got it during karate class.
Funny thing is, it didn't happen how you might think it happened.
We all know that at some stage during training we will get hurt or injured, but I never thought I would get a black eye from someone's chin, or a slashed toe from someone's toenail.
But this is exactly what happened to me.
Roughly a year ago while having a little fun sparring in the class, one of the instructors suddenly told us to stop.
"Someone is bleeding," he said.
There was some blood on the floor and as we looked around it became evident that my big toe had been cut. The instructor took a closer look at it and figured I needed to go to the hospital, which I did. My brother-in-law was with me at the time so he drove.
When we got there we called my wife to let her know where we were and she replied with, "yeah right. Which bar are you at?"
Anyway, it turned out I had been slashed by a toe nail and the cut had severed a small artery. The wound needed six stitches and because it was done by a toenail I also needed a tetanus shot.
The hospital staff bandaged my toe and I had to walk on my heel for the rest of the night.
When we got home and my wife saw the big bandage around my toe she started laughing and only just stopped last week.
Any time it is mentioned she goes into fits of laughter.
Fast forward to last weekend when we had a grading at the karate class. During the class, while sparring with one of the other students we had to stop for a bit as he was hurt, however I initially had no idea what had happened. Shortly after he explained that he had hit his chin. He thought he had hit himself, but I assured him, neither he nor I were that co-ordinated.
It seemed a little odd to me and as I hadn't felt anything I thought I must have hit him with my elbow or something by accident.
Two minutes after the fight I noticed a slight bump out of my left eye's peripheral vision and as it wasn't going away I went to the bathroom to see what it was, and there in the mirror was a nice purple welt just under, and to the outside, of my left eye. It appears that his chin had hit me on the eye socket.
Now the thing is, this was not necessarily one of those days or weeks where I thought I was a bit accident prone as nothing else had happened.
But the coincidence was, the person who had clashed chins with my eye socket was the same guy who had slashed my big toe with his toe nail.
Coincidence? I'm still wondering, and my wife is still laughing.
