My First Black Eye: The Answer

So on Friday afternoon, I went out for a run in my neighborhood.  About one mile into it, as I'm running by a tennis court, I spy a green ball flying at my head!  My cat-like relfexes kick into high gear, and I just barely dodge the speeding projectile.  Whew!  No black eye there!!! 

A few minutes later, I see a sign for the Providence Roller Derby- but then I remember that my bedtime is 8:30pm, so there's no way I could go to an event that started at the God-awful hour of 9pm.  No black eye there, either!!

I keep going, daydreaming about how fun the Roller Derby would've been, and a tree branch suddenly falls out of nowhere.  As it's headed toward my face, I perform a leaping double handspring and gracefully glide out of its path.  No black eye for me!

As I'm nearing my house, a Black Eyed Peas song came on my iPod.  As I'm rocking out, I contemplate whether a black eye would make me fit in better with the Black Eyed Peas.  I decide that my lack of dancing/vocal talent would probably still be evident, so I don't bother with self-inflicting that badge of honor.

Finally, I'm about one block from my house, enjoying the sunny weath- SMACK!  All the sudden I am on my face.  Suddenly 3 or 4 people appear out of nowhere, and all ask "Are you ok?!", but what they really meant was "Did you really just do that?  Did I really just see you completely face-plant on the perfectly flat sidewalk?  O man... I've got tell my buddy at work about that... that was HILARIOUS!!"

As with most injuries of this type, my pride was hurt significantly more than my face.  I wiped the gravel off my hands, hopped up, and jogged home, trying to look like cool.  As I turned into my driveway, I noticed something dark covering half of my left eye.  I reached up to wipe it away, and find a big clot of blood that has been accumlating over my eyelid.  Over the next 2 days, the cut has gotten smaller, but the black eye has gotten much worse.

Here's what I learned for this experience:

• Sometimes running slow is good.  The fact that I was trotting along at 10 min/mile means that there wasn't too much momentum to transfer to my eye when it hit the ground.
• Having a black eye intimidates people.  Two days after the 'incident', I ran a 5K race.  I think the competition all knew to leave me alone, since I looked so mean.  That's probably why I got 3rd place in my age group- all the other <30 year olds were too afraid of what I'd do to them if they tried to pass me.
• It's fun to make up stories about how you got a black eye.  I like rotating between a bar fight, saving a baby from a burning building and 'if I told you, I'd have to kill you