LOCATION LOCATION DIS-LOCATION

Probably one of the most ballsy-ist things I've ever seen on a basketball court. Way back in 19?? During the wainimg period of the IU Hurryin Hoosiers heyday. I was watching an IU game and IU's sharpshooter Brian Evans took a hard hit mostly on his already injured right shoulder and dislocated it.

The baby-faced warrior stood up, in excruciating pain, with his shoulder drooping down, the crowd felt his pain. Damon Bailey looked to the bench for help for Brian, just then Brian grabs his right arm and with a violent jerk and an obvious pop, he snaps his own shoulder back into its socket. Damon witnessing Brian's self-induced medical procedure was unfazed. He turned back to the bench and waved off the medical team with a "it's ok, Brian's got it" look.
Damon might have been unfazed, but crowd was fazed as hell.
Even me and the rest of the TV viewers were fazing our collective asses off. The guy didn't even come out of the game!
Balls big big balls.

Damon's look of unconcern about the injury and self healing of Brian Evans was not from a lack of caring or compassion for his teammate. It was because he knew Brian Evans may look baby-faced and a little fragile, but inside the 6'8" kid there was a Larry Bird like man-beast with heart that a lot of NBA ers will never have and a kid who did not understand the word quit.

Brian and his shoulder came to mind the other night as I stood shirtless in front of the mirror studying a large knot atop my right shoulder. No, standing shirtless in front of a mirror admiring my Adonis like body is not a regular ritual of mine.

My phone had rang earlier that day with that ominous tone that you hear right before Neo starts kicking the shit out of some agent in the Matrix movie.
I picked the ringtone for my son because more often than not, when he calls me, there's a shit storm moving in and I, like Neo will soon be fending off agents with blazing slo-motion lightning speed. Yeah, my son was a lot like me back in the day.

Today's catastrophe, he wrecked the truck that he just recently got from his grandmother.
He rear-ended someone and he buckled the hood, bent the core support which jammed the radiator back into the belt and also jammed the fender back into the drivers door.

I had him arrange towing to my house to see if I could work some magic and make it drivable once more.
When it was delivered it was not as bad as I thought, but would still require a lot of work to get the buckled core support close to where it belonged and make the hood unlatch and fix the headlight assembly. I worked at a body shop as a kid and used to do body work on my old jalopies but my skills and auto body repair tools are severally limited these days.
I did know where to start however, the core support which has the radiator bolted to it had the radiator pushed into the serpentine belt and it was shredding it.  I attached 2 come-a-longs (hand wenches) to the core support and the other ends to my Jimmy for anchor and started cranking the hand levers of the wenches.
With a lot of effort the core support came back close to its original position so I took it a little past that point then began the process to release the wenches.
I had my right hand on the biggest wench lever and had taken the tension off the cable to release the locking levers.
I had a lot of tension on the wench handle with my right hand, just then I felt a sickening pop in my shoulder and lost all the strength in it and the handle took my arm and shoulder for a brief but even more painful ride to the left of my body.


I buckled in pain and sat there grinding my teeth and cussing myself for not getting into a better position that would have prevented this injury.
After 5 minutes the agony subsided into a nice dull throbbing ache and I finished the repair with 1 and a half arms. I was not going to tell Jojo about this, you see, she thinks I'm accident prone and I didn't want to add fuel to the fire.
I went the rest of the day masking the fact that I couldn't raise my right arm above my waist. I figured it would be ok in a day or 2 and right arms are over-rated anyhow.
When I was getting ready for bed I was looking at myself shirtless in front of a mirror (I'm not really vain). That's when I saw a big lump on top of my shoulder right where the pain was. Uhhhhh not good, looked like a dislocation to me. I sat there on the bed thinking W W B D. or what would Brian do?
I was you-tubing my mind trying to remember his technique for relocating his shoulder. Hey, and remember Mel Gibson in the movie Lethal Weapon when he purposely dislocated his shoulder to escape the underwater straight jacket. Then he rammed his shoulder in the wall to pop it back in?
Of the 2 methods I had floating around in the synapse of my brain, Brian's method was probably the better choice.
Then I snapped back into reality, there's no way I would have the cohonies to try either. But the fact that it even occurred to me is testament of how much I didn't want to tell Jojo and see those rolling eyes and hear my full name being muttered from a shaking head.
At that point I had no choice but to tell her and deal with the castigation. It didn't help that just 2 days earlier I had busted my head open trying to help my step-son get a lawnmower out of the shed.

I went to the ER the next morning and X-rays showed no broken or disjointed bones. The knot was a hemotoma over the possibly injured area, so here I am sitting in Indy Ortho's waiting room to see the surgeon who fixed my left shoulder last year.
I don't know what he will say, but I know I sure as hell don't want to go through rotator cuff surgery again.
It was like having someone twisting your arm behind your back to make you holler uncle and your hollerin uncle! uncle! But the son of a bitch keeps twistin!
Their coming for me now, I will let you know the outcome.

Well he sounded pretty optimistic that it was a tear in the A C ligament a Type III shoulder separation, and probably won't need surgery. Maybe all better in 2 to 3 weeks.
I'm relieved that I won't be hollerin uncle.

But Jojo still thinks I'm a klutz.