Jungle Ball

Well....this year I've had the pleasure of playing jungle ball with some fine folks from the neighboring Ward, in the Johnson City Recreation League. For those who don't know what jungle ball is, it's alot like basketball but there are no fouls called...ever.

Last Monday night we were playing much like my beloved Utes...great defense, couldn't do a thing on offense. We were down by 35 points with 1:00 minute left in the game. I took a rebound under the basket and the guy behind me decided to come over my back and try to knock the ball out of my hands. As he proceeded to do this, he landed his elbow into my eyebrow as I was shooting the ball up under the hoop. I missed, of course, and put my hand to my eyebrow as I walked away. I touched my hand to my head and immediately had blood running down to my wrist. The Ladies on the bench turned their faces away and between that and the blood, I put 2+2 together and realized I probably needed to get to the bathroom.
At this point someone asks the obvious question? "Dude, Are you ok?" The guy who hit me says, "Did the ball do that?" to which I answered, "No, that would be an elbow". I've never seen a B-ball do that, atleast without taking teeth out. I left a trail of blood to mark my way back as I walked the entire length of the floor to the bathroom at the other end of the gym. I spent 10 minutes trying to get the blood stopped. I had a stream of blood running down my face, neck, and chest. Sorry, no pictures of that. This was at 10:20 at night. I had to stay after and fill out an incident report, then called Chari and told her the story as I drove myself to the hospital. The best news of the night: around midnight when I finally got the Doctor in the ER to fix me, she was going to do stitches but decided the dermabond glue and some tape would do just as well. Wheewww....anything to avoid the pain of that needle being stuck into you as they shoot the local....ouch.

So I missed Tuesday and Wednesday games this week (doctor's orders) and will have to wait until next week to resume my jungle ball adventure. The worst part???? I DIDN'T EVEN GET THE FOUL CALL!!!!!!!!!!!!

I ran into the referee at Walmart today (small town). I was standing there when someone said "How many stitches did you end up getting?" We talked for a moment and he apologized that he didn't even see what happened. He was looking somewhere else. Hey....it's ok....I get it. They use referee whistles here like they do car blinkers....NOT AT ALL. When choosing between signalling, smoking the cigarette, texting on the cell phone, and taking a bite of your food (usually all at the same time), somethings got to give....and it's always the blinker...or in this case, whistle.

Brian

PS - Here are some lovely photos to remember the event. Sorry Bro Jones about getting blood on the uniform but Chari was able to get it out!!!!!