BRAD MCEWEN: Some pain you have to nip in the bud

Disclaimer: While I will never know about, and therefore never dispute, the level of pain a woman experiences during childbirth, I can now say to all those moms who have made me blush while lamenting having to breastfeed, I (kind of) feel your pain.

Those close to me will gladly tell you that I am by no means a tough guy and I can unfurl a long list of examples to prove it.

When I scowl at my kids after they’ve done one of the many things kids do to elicit scowls, it usually ends with them laughing at me.

I’ve been known to cry during certain romantic comedies, and I tear up every single time I hear the saddest song ever recorded, “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

I think in the course of my entire life I’ve been in three fistfights, all of which were pretty much over after I got punched and, subsequently, teared up. In fact, the one fight that actually ended with me delivering the “knockout” blow still featured me crying over having been in a scuffle.

I played football for one year in high school, and I’m pretty sure it was my lack of killer instinct, or possibly my doughy mid-section (all right, doughy every section), that prevented me from being a standout lineman despite being one of the larger kids on the freshman squad.

Although I played “guns,” “war,” and “cops and robbers” as a kid, I never had much of an inclination to pursue any kind of military or law enforcement career, because, quite frankly, I’m more of a peaceful, easygoing, “Dude”-type guy. (“Big Lebowski” fans know what I’m talking about.)

Quite simply, no one, including me, has ever suffered under the delusion that if they look up tough in the dictionary, it will show a picture of Brad McEwen.

That said, I have in the course of my nearly 40 years dealt with my fair share of physical pain, which I like to think I’ve handled quite well, although my truly tough-as-nails wife might argue the point.

While I’ve never torn any ligaments, I’ve pretty much run the gamut on bodily injuries. I’ve had my fair share of burns, scrapes, dislocations, cuts, herniated discs and contusions, and, typically, I’ve been able to just grit my teeth and bear it until the pain subsided, without unleashing the waterworks.

Twice in my life, during fits of pointless (well, pointless in hindsight) anger, I’ve managed to break bones: One time a rib while trying to “open” a locked hotel bathroom door (yes, I’ve apologized profusely for over a decade), and another time a toe on my right foot when I stomped through the house lamenting the fact that somebody ate the piece of birthday cake I’d been saving. And I didn’t go to pieces over either episode.

There was also that time I tore up asphalt with my chin after toppling, face-first, off a makeshift bike ramp consisting of a piece of plywood, three cinder blocks and a rather steep apartment driveway. Despite a few tears, that episode only spurred me to pedal harder down the hill the next time.

I didn’t even cry the time I slid nearly the whole length of the hilly cart path between the 11^th green and 12^th tee at Doublegate, which ended with me walking the entire length of the neighborhood, only to show up white-faced at Bryan Burruss’ back door with a sneakerful of blood and, basically, no skin between my left knee and ankle.

A person could reasonably assume that some tears were shed in Ms. Myler’s art class at St. Teresa’s when we were making soap sculptures and, instead of making a nice curving slice across the corner of the bar of Dove with my X-acto knife, I made a nice curving slice down the inside of my left thumb, nearly severing the tendon on the way to my palm. No tears came.

Then there was the time I leaped off a 3-foot drain pipe, barefoot I might add, into a shallow creek bottom only to have my foot impaled by a rusty roofing nail, or the time I tripped playing with my mom and my dog and landed face-first on a metal planter on our patio and sliced open the few centimeters of my face between the bridge of my nose and my eyeball. (My 5-year-old is still fascinated by that prominent, brown scar).

Surely some tears right? Negative.

As a matter of fact, there’s any number of unfortunate mishaps that have led to nasty bluish-yellow contusions or globs of drying blood that I would consider to be quite painful that didn’t elicit shaking sobs, a runny nose or fainting.

There’s even a few minor injuries that didn’t leave marks. Like banging my head on far too many occasions on my in-laws’ “Who would build these things here?” kitchen cabinets, or bashing my elbows on seemingly every doorjamb from Albany to New Jersey, which, in the moment, hurt every bit, if not more than, the more gruesome accidents that I somehow took in stride.

None of these, however, not even the ruptured disc in my back that led to three years of regular spinal injections, holds a candle to an injury I suffered recently while visiting with my sister-in-law and her family on Jekyll Island.

Because of nothing more than a supreme combination of vanity and laziness, I suffered an injury which for a solid week has grown increasingly painful, especially when I take a shower or put on a shirt.

I won’t go into too much detail for those of you who might be a little squeamish, but I will tell you that even though it should have been evident to me over the course of many a lobster-backed trip to the beach that Coppertone is an invaluable resource when wanting to avoid burned foot tops and a peeling forehead, I can now say with certainty that I will never again set foot on a strip of sand anywhere in the world, be it the Gulf Coast, the Georgia barrier islands or the lava sands of Hawaii, or attempt to mow my lawn sans shirt, without a minimum of SPF 30 slathered across two important little pieces of my graying chest.

Because even though it might not compare to the agony of suckling a newborn, I’ve decided there’s nothing worse than having sunburned, or as I’ve taken to calling them, crispy nipples.

Email Brad McEwen at [email protected]. Follow Brad on Twitter @ABH_BradMcEwen.