Stupid Ways You’ve Injured Yourself

I’m sitting here at my desk staring at this Band-Aid on my left index finger trying to figure out exactly how I ended up cutting myself yesterday. Since the time I was a kid, I’ve found more idiotic ways of injuring myself than I can recall. Now I know that everyone out there has had moments that they’d like to forget. You know, those moments when your clumsiness almost got you killed or ended up hurting yourself over something incredibly dumb. You walk around looking like you’ve been in a streetfight and people ask you “what happened” when they see you. You can’t lie and tell them that it was something crazy that you did. You just make up a story that is beleiveable to most and hope that they don’t ask any further questions. Well… I’ve had more than a few of those moments in my life. Here’s some of them. I’ll continue from the incident that started this chain of thoughts…

I bought a new basketball from Costco this past weekend and I broke it out of the trunk yesterday… while I was attempting to quickly open the box containing the ball part of the hard cardboard sliced the index finger on my left hand and blood started pouring from the cut… being that I was outside, didn’t have any Band-aids and was already dressed to play ball, I just let the blood clot in the cut and shot baskets with my right hand for an hour… afterwards I went home and bandaged it up

-In the 3rd grade I was chasing some girls in the gymnasium. We were playing freeze tag or something, I can’t really remember. They ran under the bleachers and I ran after them. One problem, I was a lot taller than them and I forgot to duck. Blood was squirting from my head like a waterhose. Got rushed to the ER bleeding like crazy and ened up with 11 stitches. Hench the scar on my forehead right below my hairline that still remains today. To make matter even funnier, my Pops and I had to take a picture for the church directory the day after my stitches game out and bandages removed. I still have that pic of both of us in suits and me with this big red mark on my head.



-A few years ago, I was walking around the house and stepped on a nail. That wasn’t the stupid thing though. Afterwards, I put some Neosporin on the cut and placed an ice pack on my foot to numb the pain. I wrapped the frozen ice pack directly on my foot and went to sleep. Obviously I ignored the 15 minutes that is suggested. When I woke up my foot felt like it was on fire. I mean it was hot like a !@#%$#@! I went to the hospital and after examination they informed me that not only did I have an infection from stepping on the nail, but I also had first degree burn from leaving the ice pack on my foot all night. Basically, I had frostbitten my own foot. Doctors walked by the room that I was in and laughed at me and one told me never to treat another injury myself. Sadly, against doctors orders, I continue to practice my methods of medical treatment in the home today.

-I burned myself with the cigarette lighter in the car… left that swirly burn mark on my finger… I did it not once, not twice, but three times before the age of 11

-Last year sometime I was in a building. I don’t remember where I was, but the buiding had elevators . I went to get on the elevator and the doors were closing. I stuck my arm in between thinking that the doors would retract… they didn’t. No one was on the elevator at the time to hit the OPEN DOORS button, so I had to keep pulling and pulling until the doors finally opened. My arm was swollen for about a week

-I was putting toothpaste on the toothbrush one morning and accidentally flicked some of the paste into my eye… it hurt like hell!!!!! My eye was red for about 3 days…

Cosby: “I’m Callin’ You Out”


Bill Cosby video clip taken from the event

That was the message that comedian Bill Cosby delivered Tuesday night during an informal forum at the University of the District of Columbia. I heard the message loud and clear from the front row of the auditorium. (VIP tickets courtesy of my man who shall remain nameless cuz I don’t want other folks to bombard him with special requests… but he knows who he is… appeciate the hook-up my brotha!). As I was saying, the panel that was present spoke on a number of issues plaguing the Black community. These weren’t just issues for the DC area, but for all areas. Now, this event was not a speech given by Mr. Cosby, it was a open forum of discussion. The individuals onstage included:

– a foster mother who had been a former alcoholic and drug user. She was just named Foster Parent of the year
– a young 31 year old brother who witnessed the murder of his mother and brother at the hands of his mother’s estranged boyfriend when he was 11 years old
– two men, a mentor and mentee who have been together for 10 years. The oldest being the father figure for a young man who lost his mother to AIDS.
– the Chief Medical Examiner of DC who gave statistics on the number of Black men killed in DC since 1971
– a number of parents whose children had been murdered by gun violence on the streets of DC
– the Chief of Police of DC
– female legal expert

and so on and so on.

Basically Bill would just inject when he was touched by something that someone said or felt the urge to make the audience aware of the significance of what the topic of conversation was. He never talked for more than 5 minutes at a time. He was serious at times, cracked jokes at times, and just was plain ole’ Bill.

It seems to me that the media coverage for the most part has chosen to pull out the negative things that Bill has said. The things where he disses rap music and things like that. There were so many positive moments that evening and the majority of the focus was on what Black folks need to do to make things better in our communities. I don’t see anything wrong with that at all. I found myself becoming sort of emotional at times as parents talked about the children they had lost to senseless violence. You never really think about it in that aspect when watching the news or reading the paper. That person who was killed was someone’s son, husband, brother, cousin, friend. Hearing the medical examiner talk about having to put together the shattered bodies of young men in the coroners office, just so that they could be presentable and recognizable for a funeral really blew me away.

Anyway, there’s not a lot more that I can say. Basically we as Black folks know what the problems are. However what do we do to make things better? Are we doing anything? I had to ask myself as I drove home from the event last night and I think the same thing as I sit here at my desk today.

articles about the event in a few newspapers

USATODAY – Cosby gives a ‘Call Out’

Washington Post – Cosby Scolds Idle Churchgoers

Games you loved as a kid

I was just sitting around thinking about all the fun I used to have when I was young. The days when My mom or dad used to sit down with me and play games. The days when my buddies would come over the house and we’d play games, watch TV, run some ball and talk about the cute girls in school. Now, we played a lot of video games too. It all started with the Atari 2600. I was the master at playing Pac-Man and whooped everybody. But aside from video games, there were a lot of games that we played that we enjoyed. Here’s my top five in no particular order.

UNO

Connect Four

Trouble

Boggle

Scrabble

Simon

Two parties down… one more to go



One of my nieces turned 4 on Saturday and we had a huge party at Chuck E. Cheese yesterday. Now we just had a party for my oldest niece who turned 5 less than 2 weeks ago and within the next 45 days we’ll be having the third and last party for my youngest niece who turns 3. Yes, my sister has a lot on her hands. Whew!!!! Anyway, so I’m up in the spot with my digital camera taking pictures as I always do. There were a lot of people in there I swear. Scratch that, there were a lot of kids in there. Good Lord!!! My nieces and there friends were running around that joint like Energizer bunnies. I’d stand there for a minute and 3 seconds later they’d be on another ride on the other side of the play area. I’m sure glad that I had reinforcements yesterday. My sister was kind enough to invite a decent amount of people who could not only enjoy some cake and rubbery pizza, but to look after the youngins and supply tokens as well. Being the token holder is hard work. You got all the kids running over to you looking for the key to their next adventure. You betta have some coins in that cup, so they can get their ride on. Anyway, I’m sure if you’ve ever been to Chuck E. Cheese, then you don’t need me to write anymore about the atmosphere. Just sit back and enjoy some of the pics that I took.