High Jumping

Yesterday, my lovely dentist Sonia said those words to me that all dentists learn in density 101: “Now you may feel a little discomfort.” She then proceeded to inflict massive amounts of pain in my head as she rooted around the canal of my upper molar. “Yes,” I screamed, feeling like Dustin Hoffman in the movie Marathon Man, “it is safe.” Undeterred, she continued to get all Lawrence Oliver on my ass.
Today, I am still in pain, and to help put the pain in perspective, I dug out an old video in which I am shown in all my glorious stupidity defying a grisly death. “See,” I told myself as I watched the video, “things could have been worse.”
The video was taken at least 10 years ago, and involved lunacy, cocaine, jumping off stuff, and my friend Lamont (names have been changed to protect the innocent).
One day, Lamont and I were bored, so we decided to drive around the Texas Hill County in his truck, snort large amounts of cocaine, and talk about sex, politics, and cheese. Suddenly, one of us said, “Hey, let’s go jump off a cliff.” This idea really sounded good to us, so we drove up to a place on the Guadalupe River that offered bungee jumping. There, high on a limestone cliff, was a huge steel walkway jutting out over the river. All we had to do was pay some people $80, and they would strap us into harnesses, walk us up the steel plank, and let us jump out over the river and fall several hundred feet, narrowly missing rocks and people floating by on inner tubes.
My white-powdered brain was absolutely stoked at the prospect of hurtling myself into space…until I arrived at the top of the steel walkway. Once I reached the summit, my brain slipped into reverse, and my feet began to back peddle. The bungee master could sense my terror and did what all good bungee masters should do; he pushed me off.
Since I was now committed, I tried my best to execute a perfect swan dive, and I must say I looked pretty good…for about a second. I made the mistake of looking down, and the swan quickly devolved into a spastic chicken. Wings flailing about wildly, I tried to grab onto air as the water, rocks, and tubers rose to meet me.
A split second before my head became a stain on the Texas landscape; I was yanked with a terrific force back into the sky. Unfortunately, the harness I was in had straps that formed a V at my crotch. Evidently I had not shifted my package correctly and when my downward plunge was diverted upward, the force of the harness strap on my left testicle shoved it up into my body where it came to rest next to my thyroid gland. A high-velocity rearrangement of sensitive body parts causes pain that even a snout full of cocaine cannot diminish.
My tooth feels a lot better now.