The Idiot

Someday, I'll learn my lesson.

Full disclosure: what I am about to tell will not shock you. It is, really, more of the same. You probably read my post awhile back about nearly burning my chin off in an attempt to wow my children with the entertainment value of fire. And some of you were exposed to the aftermath of last summer's episode when I took a garden shovel to the skull because I tried to get a laugh from the boys by sprinting out of the house with a paper bag over my head.

Basically, when it comes to making my kids laugh, I am a full bore, Jerry Lewis-style, pratfall maniac. And I usually pay for it.

Latest example: last week, Miles and I were engaging in a game simply known as "Bad Guys." That is, I am a generic "bad guy" and he is the "good guy" who will stop me from doing whatever "bad" thing I am perpetrating. This is usually done by pretending to shoot me, or jumping on my back, or finding where I am hiding and shouting, "You are under arrest!" Pretty harmless stuff, for the most part.

Well, in an attempt to be a badder bad guy, I decided to sneak into his room and hide under a blanket. The idea was that when he ran into the room to catch me, I would leap out from under the blanket and shout, "Argggh!" or some other classic bad-guy thing. I figured he'd find this amusing.

What I didn't count on was that when I heard him come in the room and rose to my knees to make my stand, he would have a D-cell battery in his hand that he had just removed from a tape recorder. And that he would hurl said battery with full force at the shrouded "bad guy" figure rising from the floor. And that he would be laughing the devil's own throaty horse laugh as he did.

It was a direct hit.

That goddamned battery-now a solid, fast moving missile-crashed into my left cheekbone with such force that I thought I might have shattered a bone. My ear started ringing. I toppled forward with the shock of the pain, now spreading in concentric rings into my teeth, jawbone, and neck. Before flopping over, I think I managed to gasp out a muted, Homer Simpson-esque, "D'oh....."

And to add insult to injury, my 3-year old stood triumphantly over my crumpled form, shouting, "I got you, bad guy!"

I didn't actually break anything, but ended up with headaches for a week and a noticeable bruise, indented in the center, that I had to explain throughout my Christmas travels. LSW, always sympathetic in these matters, advised, "Maybe you should stop covering your head when you play with the kids."

She's probably right.

That probably won't stop me.