Subtle Hints

From time to time, life feeds us subtle hints about the direction we’re heading.  Other times these hints take on a more obvious bent.

Such was the case this past Sunday when I went exploring with my two boys.  After lunch, and still in our church clothes (much to mommy’s disdain), we started working our way down Vinyard Creek.  Griffin really wanted to make it to the opposite bank, so we spent a great deal of time trying to find a downed log or group of rocks we could use to traverse the running water.  At one point, we found a place that the water ran thin enough to jump to an island in the middle, but we couldn’t get all the way to the other side.

We gathered a lot of sticks and branches to try and make our own bridge, but in the end, it only served to dam up the stream and make it flow around the edges of our makeshift overpass.  We decided to abandon our efforts and move on.

On our way back up the bank, my boys ducked under a thick log that was a little over three feet off the ground.  I elected to hop over it instead, since I didn’t want to get dirt on my knees.  Once I had wrested my girth atop the limb, I noticed that it had a pleasant springy motion to it.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of sitting in a bouncy seat, and I must admit that I got a little carried away.  I knew there was a chance that the thing could break, but I was having way too much fun to worry about such a trifling matter…that is until a solid crack echoed up and down the creek basin.

It took the log and I approximately 0.451 seconds to reach the earth beneath us (disregarding wind resistance and rounding errors for feet-to-meter conversion).  Consequently, that is the same amount of time it takes an adult male to yell out ‘HNYAAARGH’, before being abruptly cut off by contact with solid earth.  It hurt.  My shoulder hurt.  My spine hurt.  My pride hurt.  In fact, I’m still a little sore today.  But the boys certainly got a good laugh out of it.

There are a few things I learned from this whole ordeal.  Number one, like any other muscle, if the pectoral is injured enough, it can spasm.  Number two, an extremely unpleasant way to learn about a seizing muscle is to be woken out of a dead sleep by it, during an afternoon nap.  And finally, number three, I need to lose some weight.

I know you’re probably thinking, “Oh, Michael.  One-hundred and ninety pounds isn’t that bad.  It could have happened to anybody.”  To which I would respond, “Yes, but it wasn’t you on top of that plunging log.”

Life does give us subtle hints sometimes, but I’m afraid when those don’t work, there are more obvious routes that can be used to get our attention.