You Sank My Battle$#!&

Yesterday marked a milestone in our time in Lausanne. We got the keys to our new place, moved in the first load, and went to our first sparring class. I also got my first real injury. This injury was not the result of trekking heavy bags across town or fighting Swiss people. No. I knocked over a mug. I didn't even realize that the shards had cut me; I was so focused on the fact that we were going to have to pay the hotel back for the mug. But when I bent down to start picking up the pieces I noticed a disturbing 3/4 inch gash on the inside of my right ankle. It wasn't bleeding so much as becoming a more-defined red line, so I sat down to see how deep it was. I remember from first-aid classes seeing pictures of cuts that went down to that yellow goopy part beneath the skin, but I was not expecting to see one on my own body. Unfortunately Kris was looking over my shoulder as I opened the wound up, and he made a few shuddering noises and then promptly freaked out.

Having grown up in the Schroeder household I have both witnessed and experienced an array of interesting injuries. Dusty's head catching on fire, Mom slicing her hand open on a mandoline, Dusty sanding the tip of his finger off, Mom dislocating her shoulder, Dusty lighting his hand on fire, Dad's numerous work-related wounds, Dad and I falling off the motorcycle, Dusty cracking his head open the third time ... you know, life things. The Baker household apparently did not share the same flare for excitement.

Thus Kris's initial reaction and concern that we needed to go to the emergency room. Not that we knew how to get there, or if public transportation was running that late, or how to call an ambulance. These are things we should probably figure out.

I was trying to do the basic "Do I need stitches" routine of "Can I stop the bleeding?" and "Can I close the wound?" The answers to both were yes, but the question of "Do we have a bandaid?" was proving more difficult to answer. After digging through every piece of luggage we had and turning up a single, Harry-Potter-themed bandaid, we eventually found our first-aid kit in Kris's backpack. The bleeding had effectively stopped, but until we could go buy butterfly bandages the next morning, I wasn't going to be moving around much. Opening it up to that goopy yellow stuff was too unnerving.

As of today I have the wound closed up and the bleeding stopped, but walking is both painful and impractical for a little longer. So instead of moving another load of our possessions across town as planned, we played Battleship.

More specifically, we played Bataille Navale, the 13-franc knock-off version of the original.

The pieces are the same, the gameplay is the same, but the manufacturing quality left us longing for versions we grew up with - with those letters and numbers you could read and pegs that actually fit into the holes. The instructions do provide some extra entertainment, with points like "Set up the game board by centre to 90 degrees position," and "Players will actually take turn to shout the shot."

Determined to enjoy my mandatory immobility, we sat down to play. The first hint of trouble came when a few of the ships would not fit neatly into the board. After some creative shoving, our Sea Battle (as the game board itself is labeled) was underway. At first we were trying to be clever and were calling out the coordinates, hits, and misses in French. But, since E is said A, and I is said E, and J is said G, our desire to know what was going on eclipsed our desire to feel like we were doing something productive.

Then, Kris started having the luckiest game of his life. Here is where things stood after the first 5 turns.

And here is the standing after 9 turns.

Clearly, this was not starting out as my game. It turns out, however, that the shoddy quality of the board adds a few new components to the game. First, since the top piece of the board is wobbly and the pieces don't quite fit, marking your attempts is no longer a trivial step but rather something more like pick-up sticks or operation. Here is Kris on one of this turns.

The double-sided nature of the center piece makes this level of care particularly necessary, because if you shove one of the ill-fitting pegs in too aggressively, the pegs on your opponent's side are likely to pop out and scatter. So it becomes Battleship-Pick-up-Sticks-Operation-and-Don't-Break-the-Ice.

Added bonus, some of the pegs won't stay in at all, so it is also part Memory.

Somewhere in among all of these complications, and because battleship isn't based on luck whatsoever, I started to make my comeback. Finally, after reseting the pegs that either shot or fell off the center board a dozen times, I prevailed.

Yes, note for those who actually bothered to look. One of my red pegs would not stick, so it is down on the bottom instead of marking its victory.

My foot is feeling better, though it probably still won't go into a shoe, so I can at least make a hobbling attempt at being more useful tomorrow. Or, at least, to accompany Kris as he is useful. Otherwise, you might end up with another post about Battleship.

Au revoir!