First off, I’d like to apologize for your stumbling on such a grotesque photo. I’m sorry. But I had to post this. Sorry, also, for the stupid elastic band line around my waist, and the underwear line on my lower hip.
Those of you who shop at Asian merchandise stores may be aware of metal hula hoops covered with a light layer of colorful foam — hoops that are so large and so heavy that the claim is loss of inches from your waist as you revolve it around your body. My mother fell victim to such a lame purchase.
So you already know I visited my parents over the weekend. While there, I saw the bright colors peeking out from behind the loveseat in the living room and could not resist hula-ing. My mother showed up after a few minutes of my “ow, ow, ow”ing spinning this heavy hoop around my waist. “That’s too easy for you,” she noted, “You should turn around in a circle or stand on one foot or jump.” I did all three. With the hoop still revolving painfully around me, I made the poor decision to listen to the last suggestion made by my mom to move the hoop up and down on my body. I let it drop to my hips and instead of rolling easily, it instead skipped over the part of my lower abdomen where there’s a slight concave before the protrusion of my hip bone, and it banged straight into my hip bone, twice. “OW!” I said and stopped the hula hoop. My hip hurt the rest of the evening. This morning, I noted it was still tender to the touch, and could see a slight pink discoloration. At the gym at lunchtime, the bruise had become visibly light purplish in some areas. Just now, I looked again and here’s what it’s become in a period of 24 hours:
The blood had to seep through a layer of rippling lower abdominal muscles (HAHAHA) and an even thicker layer of fat to show up underneath the skin as this blotch. That’s a lot of blood. As I was complaining about feeling like my left ovary is falling out, my bailiff said that people are gonna think Mr. W beat me. I told him, “Who’d beat someone on their freakin’ HIP BONE?” Mr. W, when I told him about my bailiff’s comment this evening, said, “Who’d believe your lame story about getting that bruise from a HULA HOOP? Of course they’re gonna think I beat you.”
Maybe we should re-evaluate all those presumed victims of domestic violence and their presumed phony stories of getting a black eye from running into the wall, or falling down stairs, or from hitting their face against a door knob.