Hurt

I remember my days as a lad, when I was young enough to act like a kid, yet big enough to inflict some real pain on my dad. Nothing too major, just jumping down onto him from the top of the sofa while he watched M.A.S.H. or some similar TV show. Paybacks are a bitch.

I should have seen it coming when my sister had her son Josh. When he was about 4 years old, we were sitting in a hammock and my nephew just wound up and clocked me right in the jaw. For no apparent reason.

And then when he was 7, he had one of those yo-yo type toys that isn't really a yo-yo, but it's more like elastic plastic in a string with a squishy thing on the end that looks like a mace. We were playing tug of war with the thing and I was holding the squishy mace end. Josh let go of the other end, the smaller end that goes around your finger, and it snapped back from at least 8 feet across the room directly into my eyeball. Ouch. I had to go to an opthamologist to make sure the blurryness would go away at some point.

And now that my own son is big enough to bring the pain, I'm getting doses of it all the time. He's been into doing some variant of the pro wrestler body slam, and he's into tackling me as soon as I walk in the door from work.

But usually the damage involves some type of swordplay. I bought him a toy lightsaber a while back. One that has sections that expand into full lightsaber glory, and then retracts for ease of using the force by some other means. I got clipped on more than one occasion as he flicked it forward to expand it. Needless to say, the lightsaber has spent many days on the shelf where the boy is unable to reach.

Judah got creative and found a cardboard tube from the middle of a gift wrap roll to use as a sword. I didn't see any harm in that, and getting hit by some cardboard was no big deal. He modified the ends of the cardboard sword with some medium-sized Legos, so it would have a flashy factor to it. I grabbed the lightsaber down from the shelf and we got into our stances, ready to duel. With one good clash of the swords, the Legos flew off the end of his sword, smacking me directly on the lips. Drew blood and everything. I'll never learn.