I just have to comment on the hard-hitting, brain-hemorrhaging news reported by the November 8th issue of Student Life: repeatedly heading a soccer ball can cause permanent “deformations” in brain matter. Says Dr. Bayly, a member of this research team, “There’s certainly been some evidence presented that some professional soccer players have some cognitive deficits.” Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent to come to the conclusion that repeatedly getting hit in the head is not a healthy for your brain. Says the article, “Until now, scientists had never studied the specific forces of a soccer ball hitting a human head.” Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m relieved that we’re funding these projects instead of using this money to provide further funding for silly things like cancer research. You’ll be happy to know that the Washington University School of Medicine will be starting a million-dollar study next week to determine if sawing the feet off of the WU track-and-field team and having them run on bloody stumps hinders their performance.
Mostly, I was amused by this soccer ball article because hitting a soccer ball with your head really hurts. I know it looks cool to score a goal with your face-brain damage is a total turn-on according to the latest issue of Cosmo. Granted, I’m not a soccer player, so I’m not entirely aware of the benefits of using your head to play the game. I just know that when I attempted to head a soccer ball during my high school gym class, I sat out the rest of the game. Which brings me to the thesis statement of this week’s column: pain is funny.
How many times have you injured yourself and have had people laugh you? Usually, the people laughing are your good friends and family who are concerned for your health and well-being. They laugh because they care or at least that’s what they tell you. Here are my three favorite personal injuries. The first two involve blunt head trauma due to running into stationary objects that magically appeared out of nowhere. The third involves a misunderstanding with an office supply.
First, I smacked the shit out of my skull running into a pole at an Embassy Suites hotel in San Diego; my sisters thought this was very funny. Second, I smacked the shit out of my face running into a pole outside of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disney World. The ride operator saw it happen and asked me if I was all right. She was suppressing a chuckle because laughter is not allowed in the happiest place on earth. Third, I was attempting to pry open a stapler in order to staple a flyer to a bulletin board, and I shot a staple directly into my index finger. Ha ha ha!
Honestly, I don’t blame anybody for laughing at certain injuries. It’s difficult to run into a glass sliding door with any dignity. There is just no way to save yourself from that embarrassment in the same way you can save yourself from the embarrassment of tripping over nothing and looking back to make sure you didn’t actually trip over something. I’m the chief offender of laughing at pain. I absolutely love America’s Funniest Home Videos because I figure that if someone had the good humor to send in the video tape, most likely grandpa didn’t die when he flipped his bicycle into the shrubbery. I especially love the videos involving trampolines and five year olds attempting to whack pi¤atas with Louisville Sluggers.
As of this week, Jackass: The Movie has earned over 53 million dollars, so I know I’m not the only one who enjoys the occasional non-fatal injury. Maybe it’s because I will never know the pain of getting kicked in the nads-call me curious. My guy friends have informed me that it hurts as bad as it looks in the movies. Sure, that may hurt, but I think women get to trump that card with the child-birth royal flush.
And with all my mirth about injury, I do whatever I can to avoid pain and the potential for “repeated low-level neurotrauma.” So if someone from the Med School pitches a soccer ball at my head over this, please don’t laugh at me. Just get a pencil and shove that dribbling piece of temporal lobe back into my ear.

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