Hello, I was just playing tennis and took a few steps back to return a ball. Unbeknownst to me, there was a colleague standing behind me who didn’t move out of the way as I went back, and so I ended up hitting him in the face on the follow through.
I feel extremely guilty and awful, despite it being a freak accident. He has a small wound above his eye. Did I say I feel guilty and awful? This is going to haunt me for a while.
Anyway, I realised this is probably a relatively common thing. In Year 11, David threw a cricket ball and it smashed into Lauren’s face, breaking all her teeth, and I wonder if that haunts him despite it being a sickeningly freak accident.
We were launching a plastic plate across the classroom and then pegging it to the corner. I received the plate and then blindly launched it towards the corner that was about to be occupied not realising that Hannah was sitting at point-blank range. It smashed her in the philtrum and there was blood everywhere and she had to go to hospital. There is a permanent scar on her face now.
My mate thinks I once knocked him unconscious by throwing a rock at his head, but what had actually happened is that he tried to throw a rock over his own head, missed, and hit himself in the face. We went for a sit down and he passed out for a bit then woke up with no memory of what had happened, so naturally assumed that I did it.
It’s understandable really, the true version seems pretty implausible.
In similar circumstances, when I was in about year 9, we were playing cricket out on the strip of tarmac behind the maths department. I was batting and made a sweet connection on my trademark well timed cut shot, with a full follow through over my left shoulder. a group of girls often came and sat down on the step adjacent to the “crease”. What I hadn’t noticed was that one of them had stood up and was just over the very same left shoulder as where my bat now was. The bat and her head made a very unwanted connection. I was obviously hugely apologetic. Thankfully she was little more than shaken, as the bat had almost come to a stop, but it did very little for our friendship. I’m not sure any of the group of girls spoke to me for quite a long time, despite a few more attempted apologies. Just so very glad I didn’t hit her any harder.
2 weeks ago I put a big pile of timber down too fast and it trapped my colleague’s hand and the nail is going to come off. She swore at me a lot in Russian but she was remarkably fine about it really. Apparently the nurse described it as ‘disgusting’. Then I saw a picture of it. It’s disgusting.