Sports Injury or Sporting Injury? a Funny Injury Happened to Me on My Way to Black Belt

I will never be accused of being a "Jock" but believe it or not, I've had my share of sports injuries and exercise accidents.

There was the time in Grade School, playing some variation of dodge-ball while scooting around on little wheeled squares that the teacher insisted on calling a scooter. That wasn't a big deal, I got hit by the ball in the back of the head while scooting around on my belly on this scooter and the next thing I know there's a large pool of my blood on the ground before me.

That actually turned out OK as for some reason, and as God is my witness, I actually improved in math for the rest of the school year.

High School, well, I got some pretty horrible rope burns in gym class when I climbed the rope, the one that we're all familiar with, lost my grip coming down and slid the rest of the way. My hands, calves and thighs hurt like hell for quite a while.

Then there are the typical BMX and Skateboarding accidents that I think everyone has experienced in one form or another.

However, the exercising injury that most sticks out in my mind was when I got suckered into an introductory week of Karate classes for $1 (one dollar).

I don't know what possessed me to happen upon this deal or what drew me into that Dojo, in the first place. Nevertheless, I went in, I signed up for the one week dollar deal and, while I was doing poorly thought out things, I decided I'd also sign up my kid sister.

Now both my sister Sandra and I were both adults in our twenties but I probably would have caught less flack had I actually discussed this with her instead of just signing her up without telling her.

My sister is a good sport usually and she finally gave in and said that she'd go with me for one week of Karate lessons. Though she said that there was no way she was going to give me the dollar I spent when I signed her up.

In a way, it really was a good deal, not only would we get a week of instruction in the ways of ancient Chinese martial arts but we'd also each get a free karate gi with the Schools name on the back.

Not bad for a dollar huh? I bet you spent more than that on your coffee and bacon, egg and cheese biscuit this morning on your way to work.

In any case, the evening arrived when my sister and I were to have our first lesson. We arrived at the Dojo and went inside. A few minutes later we were changed into our gear, barefoot and ready to learn some ancient martial arts.

The class started out simple enough, the Sensei first had us bow before entering the room with the mats on the floor and soon we were running laps. There was another class of little kids practicing their moves in the next room but my sister and I were not on the same level as those ten year old's. We had our own room, with our own brand new gi's and our own Sensei.

After, I guess what would be considered, a warm up we got down to business.

We stood in front of this huge, wall sized, mirror and our Sensei (and I do hope I'm calling him a Sensei is appropriate) showed us what stance to take and how to throw some punches and return to that same stance.

I can tell you honestly that I was a natural at standing there and throwing punches at my own reflection. In fact you might even say I was a phenom.

The class continued and I was "wowing" the instructor with my wicked mad skills.

It was coming up towards the last 20 minutes of our first lesson and it was time to bring out the big guns.

That's right, now we were to take a side stance and throw waist high kicks followed by high kicks and back to the stance. Wash, rinse and repeat.

Everything was going great until I suddenly hit the mat with quite the thud. A pain of such severity shooting up my leg that it can only be described as exquisite.

I knew what had happened and in a calm voice I told the Sensei, "Sorry, I just dislocated my knee."

The pain was horrible, and as my leg was slightly under me as well as dislocated there was only one thing to do. So I threw myself, with the palms of my hands on the mat, backwards while at the same time I "flung" my damaged leg forward as hard as possible.

I can't describe the pain to you, it was the kind of pain that you can taste on your taste buds. Having said that, my actions had a positive result as my knee joint popped back into place.

I stood up, the Sensei again asked me how badly I was hurt to which I told him that "I just need to walk this off for a few minutes." So I proceeded to gently and gingerly start walking on my injured leg. It hurt like the devil and I should have collected my things and gone home at that point, but I didn't.

After about 45 seconds of "walking it off" I went back to the spot where I was originally in front of the mirror, got back in the stance and with all that I had left in me I started throwing middle and high kicks. They were terrible in form but I toughed it out till the end of class.

Before any "mans man" congratulates me for toughing it out let me tell you how that evening ended.

My leg swelled to scary proportions and soon I was in the emergency room. They gave me pain killers and information about hot and cold compress application and they also told me to keep my leg elevated.

It wasn't till a few weeks later that I found out that I had partially torn my ACL or "Anterior Cruciate Ligament."

Yeah, it took a year to recover and I never had a second lesson in the field of Karate but I "walked" away with one thing. The fact that I toughed it out and lasted the length of the first lesson.

Naturally that was a really stupid thing to do since I probably made things worse but we men sometimes do stupid things.

Why? Cause we're MEN!