Saturday I played hoops in the morning at the gym. This tall, overweight, balding, middle-aged brute who I'd played against once before showed up to give us four on four. The last time I played against him, he played dirty, grabbing my arm on picks, elbowing me to get position, and body checking me hard whenever I tried to drive past him. He also raked me across the face, and a few weeks later I still have a scar between my eyebrows.
This time, I asked to guard him again, because life is just a whole lot more fun with a nemesis. He of course, posted me up every time, taking advantage of his 6 inch and 80 pound advantage, and I either shot over him from the perimeter or put the ball on the court and went by him. Everytime I went by him, he beat the crap out of me.
What does the Oracle's bodyguard say in The Matrix: Reloaded about only knowing someone by fighting them? I can't attest to that, but I think that matching up against an opponent in basketball is a great proxy. When someone wants to marry my sister, I won't take the guy out to a bar for drinks. No, I'll take him to play pickup hoops, and I'll leanr all I need to know about him.
About an hour in, on one of my forays to the hoop, dirty-old-guy (DOG) swiped my hand hard, fouling me to prevent the bucket. I felt a sharp pain in my right pinky finger, as if I had jammed it. I kept playing the next half hour but had trouble gripping the ball.
When I arrived home, I looked at my finger because it had gone numb. The top joint was bent down and towards my ring finger, and I couldn't straighten it or move it. It looked deformed, but it didn't really hurt, so I left it alone Saturday. Alan told me to get it checked out, though, and then Gavin told me if I didn't get it splinted it might end up frozen at that grotesque angle. Sunday morning Colin looked at it, protruding awkwardly from the side of a cheap drugstore splint I had purchased and told me it didn't look natural. Sunday night I called my doc, and he agreed: I needed to have it examined.
I relented and went to the ER last night. I hate visiting the ER off-hours or during the graveyard shift. It's a long, protracted, depressing visit to the waiting room of the afterlife, filled with the elderly and youth who look like drug addicts. I waited nearly two and a half hours just to get an x-ray and a diagnosis.
DOG had torn the tendon in my right pinky, the one that straightens it and holds it in alignment. I now have to wear a splint on the finger for the next six weeks. The printout the nurse handed me reads: "You may end up with a permanent deformity if the end joint of the finger bends at any time before healing is complete." I'm vain enough to admit that the words "permanent" and "deformity" are enough to frighten me anytime they appear in the same sentence.
Basketball is probably out, golf will be exceedingly challenging, but worst of all, it's now really, really difficult to type. It's extremely frustrating. I can't cleanly type the letter P, the right shift key (much more important than the left shift key), an apostrophe, zero, or a question mark. I'm learning how to compensate with my ring finger instead, but it's still like being shouldered into bumper to bumper traffic after having coasted in the HOV lane for hours.
Is there a blogging disabled list? Put me on the 45-day DL.