Shiner

The following is a piece I wrote for my MySpace blog but since I can post photos here, I HAD to show it, and the picture we shot, on BlogSpot.


I have a black eye.

I'm forty two years old and I have my very first black eye. No. I didn't get into a fight. No..I have not been the victim of spousal abuse. Neither did I bump into an open kitchen cupboard in the middle of the night or drop something on my face at the gym.

I got a black eye because of skim milk.

Friday night I wanted to have milk with dinner. It was a late dinner--after ten pm--and I just had to have skim milk to go with it. So I was making a run to the corner store to get some skim milk and as my foot landed on the sidewalk in front of my building, I looked across the street and I thought I saw Christopher Gatelli and Stephen Bienskie. These are dear and beloved friends whom I haven't seen in awhile. I wasn't sure it was them, though. It was dark and they were walking on a part of our street where no streetlamp shines. I walked in tandem with them on opposite sidewalks, wondering if I should call out to them or if I was imagining that it was really them. Would I be one of those people who waves at a stranger, thinking it was someone I knew? Or should I just

WHAM!!!!!!

I heard a noise, like in the cartoons, that went

KA KLAAAYAAAYAAAYAAAYAAAAAAAAAANGGGG!!!!!!

and I collapsed on the ground.

I had walked into a street sign.

I didn't just walk into a street sign; I walked into the hard, pointed edge of a street sign with such force that the contusion on my head was immediate. I reached up and felt swelling that was at least a quarter inch big. I could not get my eyes open but I was sure that if I could, I would see stars. When I did get them open I saw a man walking toward me and I wondered why he was still walking. Had I been traveling a sidewalk and seen a man walk into a street sign, I would have sat right down where I stood, laughed and pointed. I am sure that, somewhere on this street, someone was holding up a sign that said 9.9--taking off one mark because I was NOT knocked out cold. It was, truly, idiotic and I deserve to have been laughed at, pointed at and judged. It is not every day someone walks into something on the street; and they don't know what I was looking at. Anyone who saw it, must have thought I was cruising someone. THAT is worthy of walking into a street sign and falling down.

Yesterday I had a headache and some swelling and a little gash and I got through the day.

Today, though, after sleeping ten hours, I awoke with a blue/purple/red/pink swollen eye.

I have to go, now, though. CINDERELLA MAN is on cable and I simply must watch...