Break A Leg

I guess it was inevitable.
All those years of playing sports and getting through unscathed, my luck was bound to run out sometime. I just wish it happened while I was playing Chess or Poker. Is poker regarded as a sport? I don't know. I'm sure I read somewhere that someone once received a gash to the head during a game of poker.

Friday night at the Action Cricket arena was supposed to be like every other night of cricket I've played for the past few years. I get there, we kick some ass, we celebrate, I come home and brag about how brilliant our team is over a hot meal, I shower and go to bed.
I've played for a few teams over the years, and each one has been better than it's predecessor. This season's team is no exception. What makes it different though is that this team comprises of 6 Pakistanis and just two of us local boys. (There's 8 team members in an action cricket team, for those who didn't know)

On Friday night, we were scheduled to play against a team comprising of 8 Indian nationals!
That's not 8 Indians from Durban or 8 Indians from Fordsburg.
That's 8 Indians from India, the motherland, who look Indian, speak Indian, and play cricket like Indians. The fact that they now live in South Africa matters not.

As captain of the team, I knew that the game would be tense. If the handshakes before the game were anything to go by, this game might as well have been the Cricket World Cup Final between Pakistan and India. The only thing missing was the threat of bombs and the heightened security, and maybe the smell of Biryani being cooked court side.

We won the toss and decided to field first.
Just before the end of the 4th over, I dived to the right to field a ball at arms length above my head and was in mid-flight when I knew I was in trouble. My trajectory was not in sync with my landing gear, and I crashed to the ground landing on my knee, twisting it in the process. I think I may have screamed before I even hit the ground.

It's the most pain I have ever felt, and I have felt tremendous pain during my time in Vietnam in my first few years of marriage.
When I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by my team-mates, the umpire, Jesus and Elvis. Three of them asked how I was feeling, while one of them offered me some crack. I won't mention names.

The rest of the night was a blur, but I do recall my team trying to lift me into the air after we won, then there was a painful moment when I tried to remove my clothes before climbing into bed, and finally this morning I woke up and realized I'd be walking on crutches for a while.

The highlight of my weekend was bumping into an 80year old geezer also sporting crutches, who hobbled toward me and asked "So what happened to you then?"
I was tempted to tell him it was a sex-related injury, but kept silent when he said he hurt his knee years back riding a motorbike.
I guess I'll be hobbling about on these crutches for the next few weeks at best.

Bring on Monday already. I've experienced pain. There's nothing Monday could possibly do to scare me now.

Adventures Of An 80yr Old Boob

I was halfway through a post earlier today when I hit 'Save' and figured the world could hold on just a little longer to hear my views on this whole Syrian revolution and Iranian nuclear crisis.

I had to rush off to a meeting with an 80year old client whom I've been servicing for about 5 years now.
Wait. Let me rephrase that!
I've been the contractor to all of her commercial properties; her Go-To guy if you must.

Today was supposed to be a quick in-and-out. Any meeting that lasts less than 30 minutes is a quickie. I've had meetings that lasted longer than some marriages. Well, in this day and age that doesn't really say much about the length of the meetings, but you get what I'm trying to say.

So anyways, there I was with said client, when she decides to lean sideways in her summery flimsy teenage dress (did I mention she's about 80?) and the thin strippy thingy that's supposed to hold her dress up on her shoulders decides to slide off.
Out pops this wrinkly old boob and glares at me like an angry baby crocodile who hasn't been fed for weeks!
Like that's my fault!

Her little poodle goes batshit crazy (and NO! That's NOT a sexual innuendo!) and starts yapping at me like I just exposed her masters boob.

Now normally I'm pretty good at maintaining composure, but I've never been accosted by an angry poodle or an angrier wrinkled boob before, so I did the polite thing since that's the way I was brought up, and I vomited all over her carpet (and NO! Thats NOT a sexual innuendo!)
Ok no seriously, I gagged but stopped short of vomiting.

She just looked at me, popped that bad boy back into it's cave, said "Oops" and gave me this grin that reminded me of Darth Vader for some reason. She even sounded a bit like him.

Anyways, just thought I'd throw my afternoon sojourn with an 80yr old boob out there in the hope that I'll sleep better tonight.

Now back to my piece on the Syrians and Iranians and world peace.

The Power Of The Twitter Activist

Can we as South Africans please attempt to go a week, just one week, without some racial incident rearing it's ugly head?
Is that too much to ask?
Can all the racists just pipe it down or piss off to New Zealand so that the rest of us can get on with making this country a better place?

It turns out two racist pigs at the Morningside branch of Virgin Active hurled insults and slurs at a fellow gym member, simply because she was shouting out 'Yebo!' during her spinning class.

Seems as though this didn't go down too well with these two white guys in the spinning class.
You can read the article here

So Virgin Active were rather inactive in their response and handling of the matter, possibly hoping that it would simply go away. Kudos to Liz Hleza for insisting her story be told, and not taking the abuse lying down.

There's really only one correct response from Virgin Active : Cancel the membership of these racist pigs and ban them from ever joining the gym or any of it's affiliates again.

I'll be following this story with a keen interest, and if these guys think they will simply fly under the radar, they have seriously under-estimated the power of Twitter and other social networks.