The real secret to Thai kickboxing success is possessing an unusually high pain tolerance. Beyond a certain level, both opponents’ skills are similar enough that, essentially, it comes down to a test of who can stand the pounding longer before crumpling.

Which, in short, is why I do it well. It’s not that I’m a masochist – I don’t like pain. I just don’t register it much. In large part, that’s due to the games my younger brother David and I played when growing up. Bloody knuckles until we’d both be literally bleeding. Or simply taking turns giving each other Indian burns until one of us threw in the towel.

Over the years of such needlessly rough play, I usually bested my brother – though just barely – giving me license to call him a wimp, a pansy, a sissy, and a whiny little girl on more occasions than I can count. Today, however, I officially retract all such charges. David called to say that, after two weeks of a minor sprained wrist still not healing up, he had gone in to see a doctor, who, after a handful of MRI’s, deduced that David hadn’t actually sprained his wrist after all, but shattered four different bones in his hand.

He’s bound for reconstructive surgery early next week, replete with bionic-cool insertion of metal pins. So, sorry Dave; walking around for two weeks with a shattered hand, even toughing through it to hit the winning homerun in an cancer cure benefit softball game, makes it pretty clear you’re not a wimp, a pansy, a sissy or a whiny little girl. It makes it clear you’re actually an idiot instead.

Just kidding. Still, if any readers have healing psychic power to spare, please channel them Denver-ward, as my brother gets his hand put back together. Until it is, we can’t play the game where we take turns punching each other in the shoulder as hard as we can until one of us gives up.