I was having one of those uneventful spans two weeks ago, but I was convinced that if I just waited until that Saturday, I would be presented with some interesting material. That would be the day of a school chess tournament that my 9 year-old son was participating in.
I had a spiral notebook open in front of me that morning as I watched my son compete in the tournament against other students in a large room. I contemplated several blog topics during that time. The first one had to do with my son losing his first match in about a minute's time - something I didn't even realize was possible with my limited knowledge of the game. The second one had to do with the ridiculous power trip one of the adults working the registration table was on. After a while, I thought about doing the blog on how much fun my son was having (laughing and joking around with his opponents), even though he wasn't coming up on the winning end of any of his matches.
It was between tournament rounds, however, when what I felt was the best blog topic started rearing its head. After each game, my son wanted to go with me to the parking lot right outside the school and shoot baskets. It's something we almost never do because neither of us really like basketball. However, because the people who organized the tournament wanted to keep the kids busy and out of their hair when they weren't in front of a chess board, they brought a few balls for outside play.
It was a great idea, and we had a lot of fun. Neither one of us were taking it very seriously. We were just shooting some hoops, passing the ball back and forth, and having a good father/son conversation. That was going to be the gist of my blog - something about the unexpected, pleasant distraction of bonding with my son in the midst of a serious school competition.
Right as it was about time to head back inside for round four of the tournament, I took a quick shot. The ball bounced off the bottom of the rim and flew back at me pretty quickly. I got my left hand up to try and tap it back toward the rim, and that's when I felt my pinky finger jam.
We've all felt that sensation before when playing sports. It typically smarts for a minute or so, and then we carry on. That's what I would have done too, if I hadn't raised my hand to find my pinky jetted out to the side of my hand at a sick, completely unnatural angle.
I was stunned by the horrendous sight of it, and was sure my finger had to be broken even though it honestly didn't hurt all that much. My next thought was that I didn't want my son to see it. He had no idea I had even hurt myself and I wanted to keep it that way because he was having a really good time at the tournament. I didn't want to put a damper on things by freaking him out with his father's deformed digit.
I casually walked with him inside, keeping my hand from his view, and watched him pair up with his next chess opponent at a table. That's when I called my wife and told her what happened. I knew that if I waited for her to get to the building, she'd insist on taking me to the hospital. Since that would have likely meant my son being pulled from the tournament early to come with us, I clued another parent in on what was happening, and asked her to tell my son that his mother was on the way if he happened to finish his match before she got there. I then drove myself to the hospital.
As it turns out, the finger was not broken. It was just badly dislocated. It was reset, wrapped up, and I was sent on my way after a couple of hours. My son finished his chess tournament and brought home an eighth place ribbon that he was actually pretty excited about.
"I wouldn't have freaked out if I had seen your finger, Dad," he later told me. "I would have thought it was pretty cool!"
Let's hear it for desensitization, folks!
In the grand scheme of things, having my sore, swollen, stiff pinky taped to my ring finger for ten days isn't exactly terrible. It certainly hasn't kept me from posting pictures of the original injury out on Facebook to gross out my friends. But being that I write multiple columns each week and that I'm working hard on my second book, it's pretty darned irritating. I had to invent a new method of typing just to finish this blog, which took me about two full hours.
On the bright side, at least I wasn't left without a topic to write about this week.
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