learning through physical torment

Since I've been playing in a band, I've learned a lot of things about myself and my friends...some scary, some informative, some just plain unsettling. At last night's practice, though, for the first time in ages, I learned through pure, sheer, unadulterated pain.

The practice was productive enough (in spite of me being late...screwed up the starting time). We had moved into another room, were experimenting with our new PA (hey, we can hear each other! I can hear myself!), and everything went well. As we were finishing and putting our stuff up, I moved my amp to its place, put away my pedal board, and went to grab my outer shirt sitting at the front of a closet. However, I didn't really look at what I was doing. If I had, I would've noticed the vacuum cleaner that was directly in line with my eye.

Yes, I rammed my eye with a vacuum cleaner handle. Hard. I immediately saw stars. The rest of the band later told me they heard me scream (like a little girl, I presume) and sit down.

Here's where the lessons begin.

My drummer got me a bag of frozen veggies to use to ice down my eye. After a minute, he looked at my eye, burst out in laughter, and said "Dude, you're going to be screwed up." Thus, I learned something about drummers.

On the way to Howards, my friends started speculating on good stories I could tell about my soon-to-be black eye. They were all much more involved, violent, and mean-spirited than any I could invent...the best I could do is weird ("I was at the grocery store and got into a discussion about cheddar versus velveeta which turned violent"). At Howards, another friend came up with a possible scenario for the eye that was so shocking and obscene, I can't even begin to hint at it on this blog. Thus, I learned something about my friends.

When I finally saw my darling spousal unit, she was as concerned and huggy as I expected her to be. Thus, I learned (again) how lucky I am.

The next morning, I woke up to a slight soreness in my eye, but no real bruising. For some reason, I was a little disappointed. Thus, I learned something about myself.