Broken Hand

Early in the spring quarter of 2008, the unthinkable happened. I fractured my right hand.

My first experience of breaking a bone had to be my dominant hand. Please do not interpret this as a complaint; rather, this experience was a blessing in disguise.

How it happened:

I was eating lunch with Sarah Seong at Rendevous, and happened to come across some of the freshmen who were about to go play basketball. Despite having a slight stress fracture in my left foot (from running), I displayed my stubbornness by agreeing to play basketball at Sunset. The funny thing is that right before meeting with some of the freshmen, I had opened a Rendevous fortune cookie that told me to be wary of the unexpected. Later, Sarah and I agreed that this fortune cookie had accurately described what had happened to me. To keep a long story short, I was playing pick-up basketball and was overcome with aggressive frustration from some shady defense the other team was playing on me. So, I proceeded to punch the padded basketball pole which resulted in swelling and my inability to play the next game (we won that game by the way). So, I decided to apply ice and hoped for the best. Three days and one midterm later, I decided to go to the doctor and had my hand x-rayed. He told me that I had fractured my hand (known as the boxer's fracture), and would have to recover for the remainder of the quarter.
Showering with a plastic bag on my arm, asking someone else to cut my meat at dinner, feeling the sweat compile under my cast after biking, taking double the time to get ready for the day, being unable to type faster than 10 words per minute, using my left hand for every task, and much much more encompassed my routine.
Boy, this experience has helped me appreciate how a healthy body is an amazing blessing. My pride was again shown to be a fallacy, and I reaped the consequences of my rash actions and temper. Strangely, I was reminded of this anecdote from Rockefeller's biography,
Rockefeller playing chess…
“I’ll move just as soon as I get it figured out,” he told opponents who tried to rush him. “You don’t think I’m playing to get beaten, do you?”

Anyways, I thank God for allowing me to experience a fracture in my dominant hand.