My experience with kids is that they find it much easier to back down if you don't argue with them. Let Emmett say loudly that he never wants to do baseball again, nod and sympathize.

That way he hasn't had a chance to back himself into a position he may think better of.

Poor Emmett. Please keep us updated, JZ.

I am so sorry that I brought the Buffistas to March's attention. Next year I'll just throw myself heroically into a hell dimension at the beginning of the month and save you all the angst.

Poor Emmett!

To counter the bad march though, I've been having a good one.

Picked up another week of work in NYC for next month, and I just got booked for not one, but two shows today. Both of them happen in June. I also got asked about availability for two other shows.

Good lord. Poor Emmett. Been there, done that (not a baseball, a car wreck), and having had multiple broken bones, 2nd degree burns, and over 100 stitches in my life (I was an active child), it hurt worse than anything else.

But it heals, quickly, and the memory of the pain fades fast. I don't know if platitudes from an utter stranger would help at all, but feel free to reassure him - this is as bad as it gets, it only gets better. Probably will bounce off his hurt - it did for me - but I can try.

(And now my nose aches. Lord, lord, what a thing.)

Walk it off, kid...

What?

Poor Emmett. I've gotten hit in the face several times. Fortunately, the worst I ever got was a black eye.

Eeep. Poor Emmett. I've taken a hard-hit softball to the face, and, like DX, no broken bones, but it really fucking hurts. Or perhaps that goes without saying.

Hec just called again... as the pain recedes and the swelling goes down, Emmett is apparently already rethinking the no-baseball thing. The ER doctors are saying that it looks like a pretty straightforward fracture--nothing mashed, no need for anything to be moved or jiggered around and reset, and no Thomas-Haden-Church-in- Sideways clown mask.

March is still on my shit list, though.

Oh, man! Emmett! Poor guy. I was thinking of him over dinner, too.(completely unrelated...weird coincidence) Hope he doesn't give up his sport.

There is just no keeping that kid down, I tell ya.

I'm glad that the prognosis is good. Poor Emmett and poor Hec and poor JZ and EM!

Once, when I was about 13, I fell off a horse and broke my wrist -- meanwhile, in another part of town, my youngest brother got a baseball in the face.

Quite an exciting day for my parents. And it's a good thing that my other brother didn't happen to be doing anything too active on that day.