Saturday, February 24, 2018

How I got punched in the dick today. A short story by Zach Michaels.

Let me just say that nothing in life is ever normal.
Despite things feeling normal it can quickly go off the rails without warning.

I'm 32. I work a regular 9 to 5-ish job. My life is pretty routine.
When I woke up today I didn't think I'd ever be in the situation where I would end up dick punched.
I woke up, crawling out of bed, thinking about calling in sick today. Mainly because I'm mentally exhausted from trying to keep it together. It was cold, I was bundled up in my sweater and pj's not wanting to get changed for work. Today I wore my form fitting and "sweat free" boxers. They are tight and keep everything compact and nice. It's good for cycling and stuff. The morning just unrolls with the typical stuff for me. Convincing myself to just keep going because this is better than nothing at all.
I got together my shit for work, breakfast items, a snack and my lunch. I toss on my leather jacket and get to steppin'. Gotta be a responsible adult, I keep telling myself that. I have to just keep it together. One thing will lead to another and I'll catch a break soon. I sure did catch something, and thankfully nothing broke.
At work, I arrive to find out that most of the morning crew had called out. So it was me, my manager and my assistant manager to run the store for a few hours before the mid shifts arrived. I am on the register, as per the usual, doing my thing. Helping people out makes me feel better about myself because they come in with simple problems that I can fix easily. I can get pretty chatty at the register because I can have people open up to me pretty quickly. I'm an easily approachable person and I like sharing stories with people. But this is just something I do. It's the humdrum of my work. I get in these routines where everything can be the same so I try to make it interesting by chatting with them.
Customers come and go but a woman comes in with a request to pick up her special order and I help her per the norms. "Did you want to shop around before I ring you through?" I asked, with her just replying, "No thanks, my husband is shopping around and he can just pay for what ever he picks up." I laughed and rang her through. He came up as we were finishing up the transaction.
"Nothing today?" I asked. He replied, "No, not today! Couldn't find what I was lookin' for..." I probed him for information, "Well, what are you looking for, maybe we can order it?"
He tells me he's looking for a 7 inch single of Led Zeppelins Hey What Can I Do?
To no avail I can't order it or acquire it for him. So we end up chatting near the exit / entrance of the store. I stand on a raised platform and he's a step below just resting his arm on the counter as we talk about how CD compresses the audio and how the vinyl will have the sounds specific to the instrument. He liked the way it sounded on vinyl because you could hear the guitars strings and the drums symbols perfectly. As we were chatting he leans in asking me if I heard of that specific guitar they used, and while he did he tried stepping towards me.
In slow motion he kicks the step and begins falling towards me.
He is trying to get his balance where he ends up forming a fist as he falls.
I'm stepping to him, to try and catch him because I see this happening.
He lands a punch, full force into my dick, punching me straight up.
He lands on his side, hitting these little wire racks that hold news papers.
With a wince and a lot of physical pain I help him up and get him settled, thankfully he wasn't hurt.
My managers look over and everyone in the store is looking at us.
He's beat red. "Never would have guess I was gonna do that! Huh!? I'm 65 years old!" and he just leaves the store.
My manager asked, "Dude are you OK?" Looking at me dead in the eye.
I'm hunched over and I tell him, "He punched me in the dick."
Everyone in the store busts out laughing. He comes to the register and tells me to take a quick break.
I'm a little embarrassed and honestly I find it super funny that it happened. It's so random that things just play out like they do. I was just trying to play it happy and cool despite the circumstances and I get punched in the dick. I could have taken this extremely negative and been shitty about it, but honestly it made my day unique and interesting.
I'm not happy it happened but I feel like I handled it pretty well despite it all.
This lesson can be applied to a lot of life.
Even though you're doing your thing, life will punch you in the dick.
How you react to it will either make or break you.

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