Sockets

So tonight, I'm sitting on my couch with Abe playing at my feet, Joy to my left, and Amy across from me. I pull Abe's barn out of the toybox, but some of the plastic animals fall out in the "no-no" area to my right: on the floor beside the couch. Abe wants his plastic animals. Joy is in the midst of telling me a touching story about how difficult it is to explain to children what "happy tears" are. I want to pay attention to this story, so instead of turning my back to Joy to grab the plastic barn animals off the floor, I end up sort of arching my back and leaning up, with my head still facing left (towards Joy) and my right arm reaching down and behind me to grab the toys.

I try too hard to be polite because what followed was about 3 seconds of excruciating pain.

My shoulder popped out of its socket.

I was speechless, quietly gasping for breath (still trying to be polite), while my right arm is incapacitated. I don't know what to do. I'm panicking, wondering how in heck I'm going to get my arm back into the socket, and as quietly and politely as possible please. For one or two of those three long seconds, everything is black.

I sit back up, facing forward, and this makes the arm pop back into its socket. The searing pain subsides to be over-taken by a dull lingering one (still painful now as I write this). I regain vision to find Abe at my feet staring blankly and Amy across from me looking slightly disgusted.

I think Joy asked if I was okay.

"Oh yeah, I think my arm just popped out of its socket...okay, no, I'm fine, it's okay...now what were you saying about happy tears?"

Yeah, I'm slightly freaked out by this. Ted said it's because I'm weak, and a friend from our church in L.A. confirmed this by telling me less bluntly that I might want to "consider seeing a physical therapist about strengthening the surrounding muscles to decrease the chance of it happening again."

Wait. Does this mean I have to start going back to the gym?

On a sidenote: it's been fun having Joy and Amy around. I love showing folks around Portland, where we keep it weird, dislocated shoulders and all.

Update--two hours later: I'm up, unable to sleep, and not just plain-ol' insomnia like usual. My shoulder hurts too bad. Crappy crap crap crap.