Just in Case Yesterday Didn't Convince You... (Oh! And I'm a Super Ninja!)

Despite my repetition of the same sentence THREE whole times in yesterday's post, I feel some people still do not believe me about how clumsy I truly am. So today I have decided that once more I will offer (almost) factual evidence of a true story that took place in my childhood. Only difference (drum role) this instance couples my clumsiness with the clumsiness of another guy.

When I was five years old, Mother got a job teaching at my school. I loved it for two reasons. First, with her working at the same place as I went to school, even as a five-year-old I knew this meant I would get to see her every day at lunch. Second, this meant that every day after school I would get a chance to play with the other teachers' kids before Mother got off work. There was one particular kid that I really enjoyed getting to play with on a daily basis. Do not ask me his name because I could not tell you it if I had fifteen semi-automatic gun-like objects aimed directly at my manhood. Since I can't remember his name - and for purposes of smooth reading he needs a name - we will forever refer to him as Conner.



Conner was about a year younger than me. He had short brown hair and he was kinda pudgy. "Pudgy" is my nice way of saying he was about as round as he was tall. For a four-year-old that is considered cute but if it doesn't get taken care of during adolescent years it can cause a guy some serious social problems. None of this actually has to do with our clumsy adventure however. What does have to do with our clumsy adventure is that one day Mother and Conner's mother had to work really late into the night. In case you have never had a five-year-old child with a four-year-old friend stuck in the same place for many hours, I am here to inform you that it is not a good idea.

Things were going great for most of the afternoon. Then it got dark and we got bored. Luckily when we got bored our mothers were so busy with work that we easily became super ninjas and escaped the guidance of their watchful eyes.

As it is in most lower level educational buildings, there were flags in each classroom designed small enough that a different student could hold it each day in order for the rest of the class to pledge allegiance to it. In the dark, flag poles secrete a special magic glow that draws the attention of unsupervised children. Conner and I quickly found a flag pole for each of us. Our only problem was that they were attached to the chalk board right out of our reach. It's OK though. We were super ninjas and would be able to find a way to get them down anyway. After a great deal of debating whether we should climb on top of a desk to get them down or climb on top of each other to get them down we decided it would be much easier to just pull the swivel chair from the teacher's desk and climb on it. Most of you are probably guessing where this is going.

Well HA! You're wrong! Neither of us fell from the swivel chair. We were super ninjas remember? We got the flags down from the board and promptly began waving them like buffoons waving batons. With it being dark in the room, we very quickly became tired of waving the flags because we could not see clearly how awesome they looked. (however I am sure that we looked very patriotic) It was at this time that Conner came up with an excellent idea. We should use the flag poles as weapons!

Our flag pole "sword fights" were going great. That is until I turned around and Conner had disappeared. Conner had just taken the term super ninja to a whole new level. It was continuing to get darker and I started feeling my way around the empty classrooms looking for Conner so I could pounce. However, before long it became so dark that I started to feel the loneliness and darkness setting in on my mind. Looking back I can trace all my paranoia to this one instance of being alone and scared for my life. Everything around me started morphing into deadly monsters waiting to suck my brains out. I took off running and screaming.

Conner must have had a similar experience because the next time I saw him he was running directly at me flag pole extended like a lance. Luckily we had found each other though. Whatever Conner was running from must have scared him pretty significantly because he wasn't stopping. It was at the exact moment that the lance-like flag pole was being shoved down my throat that it occurred to me Conner might have thought I was the brain sucking monster. Of course I am not a brain sucking monster, but I can not think of any other reason that Conner would have for stabbing me in the throat with a flag pole/lance. I was a very nice kid. No matter what the reasoning was I now felt a flag pole puncturing my throat muscles. Mother and Conner's mother showed up very fast after the sharp object was removed. (It's almost like they heard me screaming and crying but super ninjas don't cry so I don't have a clue how they knew to come)

I remember Mother trying to take me into the bathroom to wash the blood out of my mouth and get a better look at the hole in my throat but I was not willing to follow because it was a girl's bathroom and I was both a super ninja and a boy. Neither of which use the girl's bathroom. I was in kindergarten and they had worked very hard to teach me that boys and girls are different. Nonetheless I eventually consented and followed Mother into the bathroom where the hole in my throat turned out to be much worse than we expected.

In between spitting out mass amounts of blood and crying, being a super ninja, I overheard Mother say something about an emergency room. I had not yet experienced the dog fiasco so I had no idea what I was in for when we arrived. As it turns out, emergency rooms are not my thing. (which is surprising by the amount of time that I have spent in them over the years) When we arrived at the emergency room, Mother did her very first "Save my baby" spiel. Luckily for us they would see us as promptly as possible - immediately after I finished filling out four hamstringzillion pages of paper work. (do you like that number? I totally just made it up but I feel it accurately describes the amount of paperwork connected to my injury) Once we finally were allowed to see a doctor, it was almost impossible to explain to him what had happened. For some reason he was having a hard time being able to wrap his feeble mind around the fact that I, a super ninja, was susceptible to lance-shaped flag poles. I thought it was a reasonable explanation of what had happened. Am I the only kid in the world who has had a flag pole puncture his throat? Or am I just the only super ninja to have that happen?

After we had finally halfway convinced the doctor that what we said happened truly did happen, they finally fixed me and let me go.

Now do you believe me? Because trust me, I have MANY more stories about my clumsiness. However, I pinky promise that I will not write another one until I am in desperate need to pull one out and have an easy post.