Breaking...

my finger.

This is the fifth finger I've broken.

The first was the tip of my right middle finger, on a basketball, in the summer before my junior year in high school. I didn't know it was broken until I tried to play baseball a day or two later, struck out three times, couldn't bend it, and went to the doctor. Mildly painful, but it ached and itched the whole time it was healing. There's still a little bump there above the first knuckle.

The second was my left little pinky, which was actually not technically broken, but rather dislocated and sprained, by a soccer ball in the fall of the same year. That was more of a hot tingly pain at first. After that, it didn't really hurt, but it's amazing how often your pinky casually contacts hard surfaces during the course of a day. It buzzed every time.

The third was the tip of my left ring finger. I got crushed between a soccer ball and a swift kick from an opposing player just before my senior year of high school. I knew it was broken right away. I finished out the half, then came off the field, took off my gloves (they were taped tight at the wrist, as was the style at the time) and saw the mangled knuckle and purple nail. The other times I've broken the tips of fingers, they were jammed straight back into the top end of the finger bones. This one was smashed from the top, or nail, side of finger, and separated the bone out away from the end. It throbbed for a few weeks, plus I had to miss the beginning of the soccer season.

The fourth was the tip of my right ring finger, hit by a baseball, in 2000. I thought it was just jammed, but the doctor said it was broken. They didn't fix a splint to it, though; they just gave me a piece of hard rubber to wear on the end to straighten it. There's still a noticeable swollen bump above the knuckle.

The fifth got in the way of a hard hit volleyball. I just had my hand set wrong. I'm not sure it's broken. I didn't think so at first; I could still move it and it didn't hurt very much, but today it's all swollen and purple and there's a sharp pain around the middle knuckle.

So, I've broken half of my fingers. On the positive side, it must be comparatively difficult to break thumbs and index fingers, so if I can keep my left middle finger out of harm's way, I might be all right from here on out.