The Occupational Hazards of Being a Man, Man

Congratulations to Harmon Park players of the past, present and future. In our 3rd season, we actually won a playoff game and finished our season 4-3. Good enough to win a best of seven game series in the NBA, NHL or MLB playoffs.

In our final game, on the second to last play, I dove for a flag and Jared Conover stepped on my leg as I was on the ground. It hurt at the moment, but I figured it couldn't be a serious injury and really it wasn't. When I got home that night, I had to inspect it and this is what it looked like:

Kind of a nice looking bruise. But it didn't hurt at all. The next day I stayed home from work because I had been feeling sick (ya I played through it the night before like any MAN would). Around 11:30 I went to the bathroom and had completely forgotten about the bruise when I saw this:

Quite a development in less than 24 hours. there is a little spot where the cleats pierced the skin but the bruising started to develop nicely. I was way excited. I stayed home again the next day. On the third day after the incident I was at work and went on my ritual bathroom break and knew I would need an updated picture of my leg's condition:

Day 8 now, you can see that the bruising is a lot lighter but has spread to cover a lot more area.

It never hurt at all. It itched a lot actually. You might recall Brett Favre asked himself what he was doing playing football at his age after he got a helmet to the chin. I think I understand why. The game is the most exciting thing in the world. Luckily, I didn't have to crawl into the fetal position and get carted off the field. C'mon, Brett.

So if people want to know why we do the things we do? Like risk getting hurt and eat stuff that is not good for us. Well as Gerard Butler (an honorary gun-shooting BBQer) says in How to Train Your Dragon: "We're Vikings. It's an occupational hazard."