While attending a business lunch today, someone leaned over to me and asked how I got my black eye. I was shocked and had no idea what they were talking about. Casually, I brushed it off as “oh, my eyes tend to get puffy when I’m tired”, but he insisted that it was a nice “shiner” and he joked that maybe I had been in a bar fight. After a few moments, I excused myself and went to the men’s room to see what he was talking about.
Sure enough, I had a black spot under my left eye. I had no memory of being in a fight! I’m pretty sure my eye has been with me the whole time! And then it “hit” me – JUSTIN!
When Justin was younger, we would rough-house and he’d hit me out of excitement. It was the equivalent of having an unfolded sock thrown at your face. But today, Justin is over 42 inches in height and somewhere between 45-50 lbs. When he punches you, you feel it. (I’m surprised Don King hasn’t shown up to our house yet in an effort to sign Justin all the while yelling “HE’S WHITE, BUT HE CAN FIGHT!!”) And, now that he’s had a few weeks of Karate under his belt, he has learned to follow through with this punch. He’s deadly! However, I still don’t remember getting punched in the face recently. (One tends to remember things like that!) I have no explanation other than – Justin must be punching me in my sleep. He must walk into my room at 3am, punch me in the face to show me who’s the boss, make a quick pee pee in the potty, and then get back into bed.
While standing in the washroom of Pink Taco at the Century City Mall, it dawned on me that I was a victim of abuse….the abuse of a 4 year old. I am too embarrassed to explain that I may have been beaten up by a child. So, in the future, if anyone asks….”I fell!”
For a brief moment in time, in high school, i had a summer job working at a school for kids that had been kicked out of public schools. I was the detention manager. I guess because of my wrestling skills. Anyway, there was one kid who could unscrew the desktop from its base in just a few seconds, like when you would turn around and write something on the board. He was a genius with tools, and I encouraged him to work on projects in the shop. Later in the semester when speaking with a few of teachers who had been there much longer than me, I learned why he was in the school in the first place. He had been kicked out of public school because he walked into his parents room in the middle of the night and hit his dad in the head with a hammer from his own tool set. True story.