Back in the day, our third day at Soweto, as a matter of fact, I caught a vicious elbow from Elia right on the pua. Since it looked like something out of a trigonometry SAT review course textbook, I naturally assumed my nose was broken. But I was wrong. The x-ray proved it, though I fear it also left me sterile for life, seeing as the disgruntled technician who adminstered it didn't find it necessary to put one of those space blankets over my balls before jumping for cover himself. It took only two days of on-again, off-again puuuuuuuuuushes. Today, my nose is 98 percent healed. It's still a little crooked. I had no idea how much cartilage could bend.
Instead of being hurt by an elbow yesterday, I just hurt my elbow. TSh 12,000, plus 5,000 extra for service fees worth of hurt. A fallout from fighting Rahim for the ball.
Rahim is tall, the tallest regular player at Soweto. I'd put him at 6'5"; Hunter says 6'3". So we'll go with 6'4". I was playing D up top in the 2-1-2, and someone made a lazy, floating pass from the baseline to Rahim, the best shooter on the court. If he gets an uncontested look from inside three, he's like 60 percent. So I contested.
I knocked the ball out of his hands at the three-point line, and the chase was on. Again, I jumped, knocking it out of his hands for the second time, just past halfcourt. It was just me and Rahim at that point; everyone else was waiting to see who would come up with it, the tall guy, or the hustle guy. We ran side by side to the next three-point line, and again, for the third time, he grabbed onto the ball, only to have me jump up and knock it free.
"Billy!" I knew Bariki Mdogo was behind me. I knew I had to get it to him, because there was no way I was saving it and staying in bounds. At that point, I had the same attitude that propelled me to so much success in Assassins first year at Virginia: I have already put in this much work; I am getting this ball. So I dove.
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In case you're wondering, we still lost possession of the ball. I didn't see whether I made a bad pass, or if Bariki just dropped it, but it was all for naught.
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Whenever anyone else gets hurt at Soweto, everyone stops and makes sure they're okay. For some reason though, no one cares when I'm the one bleeding. I played three more series after that Rodman esque attempt to save the ball, and the blood would not stop coming, no matter how many times I tried to just wipe it off on my shorts. There was a straight up shimo in my elbow; it was deep. So for the second time ever, I subbed myself out of a game at Soweto, and went to go clean up the cut.
Ten minutes later, I was on my way back to Ithna Asheri.
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They say "Charitable" hospital. My ass. I even got a Mzungu price on stitches.
But the doctor was cool. He definitely made me feel better about what was going to happen -- an injection into my body, in Africa -- when he made the nurse take his ringing cell phone out of his shirt pocket and hold it up to his ear, since he had just put on a fresh pair of rubber gloves. Then he did a strange little dance. Weird.
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It had been a bad day for me at the court; I'd missed two wide open lay ups in a five minute span before injuring myself. And my shooting woes did not end there.
"Hapa." The nurse saw me looking for a place to throw away the blood soaked napkin I'd been holding in my hands since I went to the Soweto Bar to clean up my arm, and opened up the Biohazard bin for me to toss it into. It was maybe two feet away. And I hit the front rim. It bounced onto the floor, I got my own rebound, and laid it in for the bucket, with the nurses and doctor shaking their heads in disappointment. I was wearing a Dream Team Shawn Kemp jersey, but I couldn't buy a bucket.
I could only buy stitches, which came in without me feeling a damn thing. The numbing solution worked kabisa.
Hunter had a date last night with a lovely lady, so he didn't want to get sweaty before going to pick her up. He didn't come to mazoezi because of that, and so wasn't there to see me fall. He came to the hospital though, to pick me up, and arrived just in time to see the main event.
I have no problem with needles; I'd make a good junkie. What I do have a problem with is watching my skin get stretched like Jerry Jones' face by a doctor who reminds me just a little too much of the one from "Arrested Development." I had watched him numb me up, and I even watched the beginning of the stitches, but soon I had to turn away.
Hunter, though, was mesmerized. I watched his eyes, which were watching the doctor's hands, and from what I could gather, there was some gross shit going on. He looked like he'd seen a ghost ... four of them. Each puncture and pull seemed to touch a nerve in his own CNS, not mine. And since I couldn't feel a thing, I was having a grand old time, laughing it up and making jokes throughout with the nurses. Made me feel pretty tough indeed.
And seeing as I, too, was having dinner with a lovely lady -- albeit not a date, like Hunter -- I felt really tough when I walked into Big Bite and was able to casually say, "Sorry I'm late. I just had to run over to the hospital real quick and get some stitches."
I was back at practice this afternoon. Only two people even bothered to ask about my arm. But I'm sure they'll be asking about Ice Pee tomorrow, because he's sitting in the exact same hospital as we speak, courtesy of an elbow to the head by none other than Elia. I'd never seen blood shooting out of someone's head with such force. Rough couple of days at Soweto.
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