Shiner

Now that the swelling is down, the bruising is pretty much gone, and the black eye is fading, I'll tell you what happened.

It's kind of a funny story. Although we did try and come up with all sorts of easier, and funnier, alternatives.

Coworker 1: Tell them you were slacking off. And so I kicked you in the face.
Coworker 2: No, say that you were talking back!
Me: That does sound like me. And that you backhanded me!
Coworker 1: Say you fell on a doorknob.
Me: Or I'll say I fell down the stairs. And then look away.
Coworker 2: Say you got hit by a table. Or that you punched yourself while trying to move chairs.
Coworker 3: Man, that is swelling.
Me: He's getting me ice.
Coworker 3: I would say that he was being a gentleman, but...

So at Scheman, sometimes people want classroom sets (rows of tables with chairs) and sometimes they want power to those tables to run laptops or whatever. We pull out our huge collection of extension cables, quad boxes, and power strips, and tape them down under the tables, daisy chaining them from any available outlet. This building is from before personal computers. On this day, we had to strike a bunch of classrooms with power. One of my coworkers, Isaac, likes to make balls out of the duct tape, making it bigger and bigger as we pull up the cords. He prides himself on being able to make it very firm.

Three of us were waiting for another coworker to go and check exactly what we had to pull in a particular room and started playing hackysack with this duct tape ball. I suck at hackysack, but wasn't the only one. And then Isaac bounced it twice and then kicked it off his toe. It hit me in the face on my right cheekbone so hard it rebounded to the back of the room.

We all burst into laughter, even as I'm clutching my face and Isaac is leaning on the table. "Ow, my toe!" are the first words he managed.

"I can't say I feel very compassionate about your toe," I say between laughs.

"You okay?" he asks.

"I might cry. But just like I would if I got hit in the nose."

One coworker walks in, sees us, and walks right back out.

For the rest of the day, when Isaac says to do something, Dean is like, "I'll do it, I don't want you to hurt me!"

I didn't cry, I did get ice, and I got a bit of a shiner. And that's the actual story. I was attacked by a vicious duct tape ball. Later Bryan kicked it in the general direction of Isaac and nailed him in the knee.

Isaac: We need to make it bigger.
Me: Seriously?
Isaac: Yeah. So we won't be tempted to kick it.

I'm sure that will work brilliantly.