Owm

What do you think of when someone mentions yoga? Calm, serene, meditative stretchy bendiness? That’s what I think of, certainly.
Now, I am aware that there are other forms of yoga involving sweating and speed, but having never tried these forms I feel completely qualified to dismiss these as horribly misguided distortions of the art.
But that is neither here nor there…
I bring up yoga because it seems to me unlikely that one can sustain a yoga-related injury. What could happen? I suppose you could get stuck in a particularly interesting position, or maybe develop an incense headache, but really, it’s slow and calm and generally non-threatening.
Yet somehow, Colin managed to sustain a series of gouges on his face, and inflict some pretty significant damage on his glasses, through yoga.
Last weekend, my friend Erin came over to go sledding with us, after which we went back to my place. I went off to the kitchen to make some well-deserved hot chocolate, and left Erin to be entertained by the boys.
So Colin got up on a chair in the hallway, to show Erin how well he can do the lotus position – that’s the one where you sit and cross your legs over each other, or, as my pre-PC elementary school phys. ed. teacher would say, “Indian style.” To further impress Erin, Colin wove his arms through his legs – and pitched face-first off the chair and onto the wooden floor.
At which point Robert yelled at Erin “Why didn’t you catch him?!”
Erin, who does not any insane children of her own, took this quite seriously, and was very apologetic to Robert, Colin and me about failing to prevent this accident, which clearly was not her fault at all.
I was able to reassure her a few days later, when I told her about taking the boys to the hairdresser the next day – where Robert yelled at his hairdresser from start to finish: “why are you washing my hair?! Why are you throwing ice on my head?! [cold water] Why are you pouring lava on my head?! [she turned the warm water up] What is this towel for?!” And that was just while getting his hair washed.
So, in the end, Colin’s fine – his face has already healed, and we convinced a very nice lady at the optometrist’s shop to bend his frames back into shape – and Robert is in training to be George Costanza’s mother.