A guy I know has just injured his wrist punching boards at Taekwondo classes. If he'd waited until he'd read my collection of short stories (due out next year) he might have avoided some pain.
On the other hand, maybe because I wrote it, it was going to happen, no matter what.
Here's the relevant section from the story Marital Bliss. I've run on a few paragraphs more as an extra warning to anyone who wants to heed it.
Kaz, they teach her in Fight Class: ‘when you punch someone—if you have to punch them—lead with the first two knuckles.’ If you hit with the ring finger and little finger knuckles first, they’ll dislocate, they’ll break.
And they teach her: ‘fist and wrist’.
You have to keep them straight. In line.
Boxers strap their wrists with bandages so they can’t bend them. If the wrist bends, all that power, all that momentum, it snaps the bones.
And they teach her: ‘hit the stomach, hit the ribs.
Never punch the mouth’.
Never.
Punch them in the mouth and you can knock teeth out, you can bust lips, you can end a fight there and then—but the mouth is a sewer of bacteria.
Break the skin on your hand, break the knuckle capsule with a tooth, and that bacteria, it’ll make your hand swell up, then your arm. You’ll blister, your fingers blacken. You’ll run a fever, you’ll be throwing up, and without medical help, you’ll be dead within a week.
At the hospital, at the mortuary, they’ll call it Fight Bite.
The guy you smacked in the mouth, he’ll still have thick lip, and he’ll look like a dork when he smiles, but he won’t give a fuck when he’s grinning all the way through your funeral.
Not that you’ll see him, because the coffin will be closed. Your face will be black, with infectious pus oozing from your nose and mouth, so don’t expect your loved ones to kiss you goodbye.
--from Marital Bliss by Jim Corwell
