The New Scar Adorning My Forehead

There are some people who are apparently aware that I have a new scar that adorns my forehead. And since unlike almost twenty-three years ago when I obtained my first scar across my forehead (requiring stitches on that occasion) my older brother was nowhere to be found to inflict the scar upon me, there must be, you reason, another explanation. And so there is...

Late Thursday night of last week, I happened to be walking the pathways in the zoo when I happened to notice that some innocent, sweet five-year old girl happened to have squeezed herself into a bear's habitat. Looking around, I saw no one else available to rescue this little girl, so I ran over and scaled to the top of the gate surrounding the area and jumped to the ground. I immediately dashed between the bear and the little girl. The bear informed me (and I'm not sure whether the bear actually talked or whether this was some sort of psychic communication we had going between us) that the encroachment that had been enacted upon his ground could only be sated with blood. And so I made a bargain with the bear; the two of us (the bear and myself) would box in order that this blood requirement be fulfilled.

We made a few ground rules for the the fight. The first rule was that the fight was to last no more than ten rounds. This was not a championship bout, after all, but if it were, we would have planned for a full twelve rounds. If the fight did go the full ten rounds, the decision would be turned over to the judge (probably the little girl, I guess, but I really don't remember where she was at this point anyway). Secondly, the fight was to be stopped at first blood. We each had monkeys acting as corners, and at the very least, I instructed the monkey in my corner not to throw in the towel under any circumstances. (But since I was talking to a monkey and not another human, I instructed him not to throw in his poop under any circumstances.)

And so the fight started. It was quite the epic, but around the middle of round seven I had to look back at my corner monkey because he was making a lot of noise. First I had to dodge some poop that he threw, which made me very angry because I had instructed him not to do so, but then I realized that he was pointing at my forehead. When I rubbed my forehead, I realized that I was actually bleeding. This was strange because I could not recall the bear actually landing a decent punch on me. However, rules are rules, and with my forehead bleeding, the blood requirement was fulfilled. With the match over, I jumped the gate and went home for the night. I believe that the bear said that he was going to go into hibernation for a few months.

Epilogue: The fight really should have been over far earlier considering the mauling that I dished out to this bear in the opening rounds. I was at the top of my game with my lightning fast jabs and powerful crosses. The bear was almost certainly bleeding by early in round two, but he kept claiming that it was just that he was sweating and that his sweat was red. I decided to let this slide since this was the bear's home after all, and I did not really want to embarrass him there...