One night my mother went out to her dart game and my sister had a friend over and they were watching television downstairs. I had absolutely nothing to do that night, nothing to watch, no homework, nothing. I tried to think of one of my formerly many hobbies to do but came up empty. I was so bored that I hurt physically; I felt the boredom in my bones and muscles. In fact, for a minute I was actually writhing around in physically agony. I decided to get something to eat then figure out what to do.

I went downstairs and checked the fridge. To top off the hollow, emptiness of that night, there wasn’t even anything to eat. I ended up just grabbing some (gasp!) fruit from the drawer. I got myself an orange and a grapefruit.

On my way back up, I juggled the citruses all the way up the stairs. When I got up, I started to play another game with them where I would toss one up then catch it with an overhand swooping motion towards myself, causing the fruit to hit the palm of my hand hard.

I returned to my room and sat on the bed flipping through the channels. I stopped on something that I didn’t really care about and continued the fruit-catch game with the orange because it fit in my hand better and gave a more satisfying thwack! when it hit my palm. I did that a few times when on the last catch, I didn’t quite get a good grip on the orange and it slipped out of my hand and flew straight towards me. It hit me square in the groin and I fell over on the bed. I lay there in agony a hundred times worse than what I felt a few minutes ago. After a few seconds of pain, I began to laugh.

It may seem odd that I would laugh at getting hit so hard in the testicles with an orange, but it was a laugh of relief because it could have been worse, it could have been the grapefruit.