A short sketch I’ve written as an exercise for a “Humour Writing” class.

Two things flashed through my mind as I flew three meters up in the air and then back towards the ground at twenty five kilometers per hour. One: this is going to hurt. Two: in retrospect, riding a bike at full speed through a busy intersection with seven shots of Smirnoff vodka in me had probably been a bad idea. I also conjured up a couple of swear words, but I’ll spare you those. Thanks to the Aikido classes I took back when I was seven I instinctively managed to assemble my limbs and body into some semblance of a human bowling ball, right before impact. Later on doctors would tell me that this trick saved me from quite a few extra fractures.

Upon landing and then rolling to a gradual stop I collided with the following objects, in no particular order: deflated football, fire hydrant, tricycle, Barbie doll (that one hurt more than you think), assorted GI Joe figures, deflated basketball (really, somebody should buy these guys an air pump) and a tree. I believe the tree was the last thing I hit, but don’t take my word for it since I’d passed out well before I came to a complete stop. When I opened my eyes again Mark and Johan were both standing over me with expressions of utter terror on their faces. Mark was the first to speak.

“Whoa dude, are you hurt?”, he must have suspected that I had adamantium in my bones like Wolverine if he felt the need to ask such a stupid question after having just watched me torpedo my way through solid objects. I wanted to convey to him how much of an idiot I thought he was, but all that came out was: “Urghhhhh”. The guys looked at each other and Johan began to slowly shake his head:

“I told you both – better safe than sorry!”, Johan had an annoying habit of speaking in cliches and proverbs. He had also been the only one of us three sober minded enough to have tried to discourage my stunt. As Mark was rapidly punching 1-1-2 into his mobile, Johan grabbed my head and tried to lift it up. I assume this was supposed to make me feel more comfortable. Instead, it sent a jolt of searing pain from my neck all the way down my spine. The scream that followed must have sounded so inhuman that Johan dropped my head (ouch!), jumped backwards, and let out a high-pitched shriek that triggered a chain of howls from neighbourhood dogs.

“Shit man, sorry! Sorry!”, he was turning a special shade of pale that I have never seen on another human being before. The poor guy probably thought he had single-handedly cracked every bone in my body. He looked like a kid who had just knocked over and shattered a big screen plasma TV. I cracked up, and even though every movement caused pain to random parts of my body I couldn’t stop laughing. Johan and Mark both breathed a sigh of relief – if I was laughing then I was going to be OK. A bit later we heard the siren of an approaching ambulance and Johan even forced a feeble smile:

“Well…you win some, you lose some, right?”, he said.