Eighth grade is supposed to be a year of boy bands, sparkly lip gloss, acne, and the dying love of that enigmatic concept called high school. For me, it was the majority of that (well, replace the boy bands with Green Day. What’d you expect?) but with one lovely curveball thrown in: breaking my face.
Yes, you read that correctly.
It was the second week of school. A friend of mine, attempting at generosity, had a gaggle of girls over for a sleepover. I politely accepted, and believe I even brought a hostess gift of a bag of Reese’s Pieces.
Everything was magical and Lisa Frank worthy until that fateful moment.
The moment that changed everything.
Well, maybe just my face.
I did gymnastics when I was younger. Wanting to outdo whichever gymnast was considered “beast” before Shawn Johnson, I decided to do a front flip and land on my feet. 99.999999% of the time, this is what happens. But this time, I had the 0.000001% failure. My friends even warned me that my accident-prone nature might get the best of me (they barely even knew me and my bad luck already preceded me…), but I rolled my eyes and did it anyway, saying with confidence: “I did this all the time, I never hurt myself! And if you’re worrying about broken bones, I haven’t broken a single one!!” With which my right knee shoved into my face, fracturing my cheekbone 18 times, breaking the orbital (the bone that holds your eye in your face), and breaking my nose in 4 places—and now, since they didn’t do surgery then, I have to get my nose rebuilt on June 3rd (Care packages greatly appreciated).
Justin can sit on his high, healthy boned chair and gab all he wants to. He just better watch out before his face gets rammed in. By his knee. On a trampoline.

Breaking your face isn’t a glamorous movie make-up job. You don’t get kudos for being in a fight worthy of mentioning in an S.E. Hinton book. No, it just fucking hurts. Allergies are a bitch enough, it’s worse when you can’t blow your nose without crying like a baby and your face looks like it got transplanted from a Smurf–all in time for
picture day!!! I’ve had double whiplash, severe tendonitis in both shoulders, recurring sinus infections, bloody noses, hangovers, migraines, paper cuts, and bleeding knees. THIS IS SENT FROM HELL…OR SPARTA. As for this surgery, here’s what goes down. Basically, my nose is nothing but broken bones & scar tissue. So first they have to carve
out my nostrils to make them bigger. Then, they take all the skin off my nose and, in Ashlee Simpson style, realign the cartilage in my nose (aka, rebreaking my nose to put it back together). Then I get plastic shoved up my nose to keep my nose from healing shut together (so my nose would look more like Voldemort than Ashlee) and can’t breathe. So, while I get to be a lazy ass for three weeks, I’ll have blood running down my face ala Andrew WK and won’t be able to breathe through my nose.

Hot diggity damn.

Call me “average” if you wish, but if that means that I manage not to do extraordinarily stupid things to break myself, then I suppose I accept the derogatory nomenclature as fact.

As an “average” person, here is a sampling of the crazy things that I’ve done in my life, all of which I’ve executed without breaking a single bone or even spraining something (knock on wood, or heaven’s door):

I’ve traveled around Europe. Cooped up in a plane on a trans-Atlantic flight; on a non-English-speaking bus; within a car driving on skinny, curvy mountain roads; drunken on a ferry boat; drunken on bike; drunken on foot; and on a train being conduct by travel workers who just recently ended their “You, imperialist swine, don’t pay us enough” strike. Moreover, some angry, uppity, French po-po’s almost arrested my friend Jeff because his last name is French and they just so happened to be looking for some runaway serial killer or something on our redline train ride. We were seconds away from being thrown in the slammer with him, had he been chosen as the scapegoat, which was frightening because foreign prisons are not places you want to go into, as you usually come out of them with at least a broken rib or two… if you’re lucky. “Innocent until proven guilty” only counts in America, my friends.

I’ve worked as a deckhand on a 50-foot fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico for 8 summers.  In all that time, the worst that I’ve ever done was the bruise my thumb in a sliding door, but I chalk that one up to a combination of exhaustion and rocky seas. Image growing up around Steve Irwin-slaying stingrays, a couple of flailing baby Jaws, and a whole bunch of other nasty, water-dwelling shit that wants to get up close and personal with you. I have shaken hands with many a sneaky crab, but I have never injured or killed myself while working at literally the most dangerous job on the planet. Out there, you find yourself quite happy that “gloves hinder love,” as you probably don’t want what those sea creatures have to offer.

I’ve skied the slopes of Denver, Colorado (those being Vail, Breckenridge, Beaver Creek, etc.). Though I damn near busted my head open on an ash tree while glade skiing, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as the old adage goes, and since my brother and I weren’t occupying innocent countries or tossing u-shaped pieces of metal at a stick (by the way, this is quite a stupid sport), I like to think that I made it safe to the home base (also a stupid sport).

I’ve won multiple shopping cart races in the Wal-Mart parking lots of many cities, all without a helmet, because they ruin the natural aerodynamics of my sexy, full-bodied hair.

I’ve scaled quite a few public statues and have defiled them for long enough to have also the photographic evidence of doing so. Now, instead of the founders of countries or religions, they serve as the founders of my humor.

I’ve gotten schwasted in public in multiple cities, the most recent and epic of which almost resulted in a in a fight at Mardi Gras with an overly angry-drunk and territorial tourist frat boy. Remember, spilled drinks can be your friend, as long as they end up on the other, disliked person.

I’ve grown up having sword fights with my older brother. We gradually advanced from empty paper towel rolls to huge, empty wrapping paper rolls to fallen tree sticks to wooden, Japanese bokken swords, and finally, to wielding cheap metal swords and tinking them together until they were dented to oblivion. Never was an ocular nerve damaged or a hand severed in the intense battles of our imaginations.

So, appropriately, after listing what I’ve been able to do without needing some sort of medical attention, I have a few questions for you more mended folk out there:

Were you just looking for attention?

Was it all just a cry for help?

You’re not really that dumb or that fragile, are you?

Are you really unlucky, or just really stupid?

Do you still need kiddie gates in your room at the age of 20-something?

Most importantly, if “I break your face” rises above the level of threat and results in actualized, full trampoline pwnage, I think it’s time for you to fold your cards. We can’t all be as glass-faced as 50 Cent, who received his from a friendly drive-by. Otherwise, he might lose just his cool.