Crazy Tuesday

I woke up and felt recharged after eight hours of sleep. I had about three hours the night before. I ate a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats, one of my favorite types of cereal. I went straight to work with a WordPress developer at the University to change a domain name for one of our centers. The developer was awesome and we worked together well. I appreciated her talent as well as her honesty. She didn’t shy away from letting me know what she didn’t know and I did the same. Fortunately, we had different skill sets; therefore, we had each other covered. We completed the project right before noon. Everything worked out as expected. Even though we had worked together in the past few years, we had never met. I hope to have a chance to thank her in person one day.

After wrapping up the project, I went to the public library to pick up Đán. He had a private tutor session with his recent teacher to help him with language arts. The wasp removal specialist called to come by to take away a wasp nest that was as huge as a basketball. Then I helped my son Đạo set up his Zoom meeting for his writing workshop. That was only noon time.

I took Đán, Xuân, and their cousin Khôi to the ice-skating development camp at Ballston Quarter. After checking them in, I headed straight down to Copa to have lunch and to watch England versus Germany. I ordered a glass of Sangria, opened up my laptop to do some work, and relaxed for a bit. Around 3:30 pm, I took a break and decided to head to the Powhatan Springs Skatepark to do some drops and to skate around. This park is for serious skateboarding. It had three bowls. A young kid, probably around twelve years old, just dropped into the deepest bowl like nothing. He had no helmet and no guards. He was skating on his board like surfing.

I tried dropping in the shallow end of the lower bowl first and then the shallow end of the higher bowl. Then I peeped into the deep end of the higher bowl. It was not that deep, but the curve was a little deep. I went for it and busted my butt. My whole vision collapsed as the 95-degree Fahrenheit kicked in. I managed to get myself out of the bowl and found a cool grass spot under the shade to crash. I texted my wife to say, “I love you,” and then closed my eyes. I closed my eyes for 15 minutes to pull myself together. When I woke up, my butt was in tremendous pain and I could barely pull myself up. I didn’t receive a reply from my wife.

I managed to pick up the boys from skate camp with tremendous pain in my butt. I feel like an old fool. No wait, I am an old fool. I didn’t let my kids rollerblade because it looked dangerous skating on the streets. Then I got into it myself and now I am the one that takes the risks. It is true what they said, “No pain, no gain” and “Getting injured is part of the game.” As I dragged myself out to my car, I heard the kids say to each other, “Go hard or go home.” In my case, go hard and go to the hospital.