Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Bang and Stub

Banging your knee and stubbing your toe are unique among injuries in that they both produce an instant and very specific wave of depression. Why is this?
Posted by Bryan Appleyard at 8:11 am

18 comments:

  1. VinceJune 03, 2008 9:47 am

    Depression is not the specific wave I enter. Mine is much nearer to a surge, with sound effects.

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  2. AnonymousJune 03, 2008 10:50 am

    It is because you are rooted to the ground, and draw chi up from the Earth, through your feet, so when you stub a toe the pain kind of scrambles your usual chi-sucking-up and you feel weak and dejected.

    In Homer, the knees are the seat of power, so when a hero is slain his knees are undone. So likewise, banging your knee questions your very being.

    The trick is to counter such injuries by punching yourself in the head.

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  3. Ian russellJune 03, 2008 10:50 am

    only depression when followed by unsolicited advice like ''you didn't want to do that.''

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  4. Selena DreamyJune 03, 2008 11:36 am

    According to Harry M. of the British Alliance of Bipolar Management, depression has four sources: banging your knee, loss of a personal goal; stubbing your toe, and the denial of primary needs.

    Three months later, after a long struggle with alcoholism and banging his knee, he committed suicide at the age of fifty-three...

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  5. Frank WilsonJune 03, 2008 12:11 pm

    Well, there's banging you knee and banging your knee. About 30 years ago I smashed one of mine into a pile of upturned concrete and split my kneecap right down the middle. Hurt like hell then, still causes me trouble to this day. But caused no depression, because it could have been a lot worse. My point? It is the annoying injury that causes depression. A serious one gives you more important things to think about.

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  6. maltyJune 03, 2008 12:22 pm

    If the opposite were true, above mishaps caused joy, then the accusation of masochistic tendencies could be leveled, nasty things tendencies, ask Max Mosley, although I see he beat the rap. Personally I can live with physical pain, it's waking up in the morning and realising that Jeremy Vine still lives that depresses me.

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  7. Uncle Dick MadeleyJune 03, 2008 12:42 pm

    Indeed, I find it a deep depression. It's as though this post were written about me having recently stubbed my toe while watching a mime in the middle of Manchester, fell over and cracked my knee. But might I add elbows and testicles to the debate? I find that injury to any of these four make me miserable, but a combination of any two or more leads to severe unhappiness.

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  8. BritJune 03, 2008 12:46 pm

    You're right to bring testicles to the table, Richard. Testicles is worst because everybody laughs.

    Also, the funny bone isn't.

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  9. MarkJune 03, 2008 1:02 pm

    Have you tried banging your knee and stubbing your toe at exactly the same moment? One may cancel the other out and cause instant satori. Worth a try?

    My guess is that the depression is caused by anger, anger at knowing that one's inner clown has come out to play. Later today he may play some more, locking you out of the house by leaving your keys on the table and supplying you with shopping bag that bursts half-way home.

    All a distressing state of affairs for a coulrophobic. I would feel the same.

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  10. Sophie KingJune 03, 2008 1:05 pm

    Good grief, Bryan, is there no end to the misery? I do sympathise, but since you got back from the US you have been sounding suspiciously like my mother. Is there nothing on your horizon to cheer you up a bit?

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  11. Selena DreamyJune 03, 2008 2:15 pm

    Point taken Sophie!

    I'm going to take a wild guess, however, and say that Bryan has never suffered from post-natal depression!

    D.

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  12. Uncle Dick MadeleyJune 03, 2008 2:55 pm

    Brit, I always like to bring my testicles to the table. I once tried to leave them behind but that was far more painful than you can imagine.

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  13. AnonymousJune 03, 2008 2:58 pm

    Didums.

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  14. maltyJune 03, 2008 3:01 pm

    That must have been when the one legged blonde geordie nutter conned you then, you looked a bit like a eunuch

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  15. mahlermanJune 03, 2008 4:45 pm

    Sophie, I'm surprised that you are surprised that Bryan feels quite so grim since his return from America - probably touching down at Heathrow, what a welcome back.
    Anybody who lives in London has a surly shop assistant story to put into even sharper relief the courtesy and friendliness that they remember from their last foreign trip - to just about anywhere. But am I alone in imagining that it seems to be a Greater London problem? Do things start to improve once the M25 has been breached, and you stop in, say, Cobham, to buy a newspaper, or a tin of Pringles? Yes, they do.And if Bryan, the next time you take on the A303 and find yourself spinning past the painted caravans at Stonehenge, hack-on another 40 miles or so and try buying a packet of Multi Cheerios in, say, Wincanton, or Montecute. If they don't have it in the local Spar, they will offer to order it for you - it's like setting your clock back 50 years.
    No, as Mary Wollstonecraft said, 'the beginning is always today', and if I am going to live long enough to be a problem to my children, I must put this city behind me
    Mahlerman

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  16. Sophie KingJune 03, 2008 6:38 pm

    You're right, Mahlerman. I think it is a greater London thing. But I also think that Bryan didn't go away for long enough. Seven weeks is long enough to start appreciating another culture and all its weirdnesses, but not long enough to start missing home and all that is familiar.

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  17. AnonymousJune 04, 2008 7:52 am

    I thought you were never going to take your new boots off ?

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  18. TheNineDollarBlogJune 11, 2008 12:48 am

    i'd say its because its such an easily avoidable injury. if you were only 'on the ball' enough to keep track of the position of your toe/knee relative to hard surfaces, you would never experience that pain.

    the depression comes from the brief feeling of self-loathing and inadequacy that one would naturally feel towards a person so stupid as to bang his toe.

    well, that's my take at least...

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