“The bigger you are the harder you fall” and “My dad never cries!” are two urban myths that I’ve grown up with, and rarely witnessed myself.  My dad was the toughest guy in town.  Never cried, never showed pain and rarely fell … only when we played badminton.  I’m sure that’s the case for most families, but my dad was the best!

Now I’m the dad and I have to show strength, composure and pain resistance when my kids are around; showing them that I’m the toughest dad in the hood.  But, something tells that I dropped slightly on the “daddy is tough” bell curve recently.

My wife, oldest daughter and I were chatting in the kitchen, and my daughter was hugging me while telling us about her day at school.  It was a very nice and calm family chat, and the other two kids were causing havoc in the living room; screaming and singing along to their favourite movie “Frozen“.

I needed to move towards the cooker, preparing food as a great dad, and harden noticed that my daughter was standing with her legs in a slight split position.  As I gracefully started to move past her, she released her hugging grip.

The next few seconds happened in absolutely matrix slow motion.

My super awesome body was lifted magically off the floor, floating in midair and then hit the floor smack down style on my side.  This was like a David vs Goliath moment, where a tiny girl was able to bring down a giant with a simple old-school style ninja trick.  Her legs clipped my legs away from underneath me.

As I was lying on the floor, wind knocked out of me, I felt pain shooting through my ageing body; from my ankle to my head.  My entire left side was humming with pain.

• My dear wife initially burst out laughing uncontrollably, and gently kicked me to get off the floor.  But I couldn’t move!
• My daughter was amazed that she was able to clip her dad down, with a simple swipe of her tiny legs, but gradually got upset as she realised I couldn’t get up.
• My tear ducts released a few drops, in pain of course and against my dadly will, and I made a few pain related grunts.

6 minute passed and I could start moving my joints again, but at this stage my daughter had left the room crying as she thought she injured dad a lot and my wife was demanding that I got up.

Slowly, as a 120 year old giant turtle, I rolled onto my back and slowly prepared my body to get up.  It was not easy, but I had to show the family that dad was fine.  So, as my body start to rise, I started to laugh – it was a pain filled laughter, but nevertheless a sign that I was doing “fine”.

Another 18 minutes passed and at this point my body was starting to get its mobility back and a few key areas on my body was sending signals to my brain that they were not operating at full capacity, more like 58% and charging.

Just like in Mythbusters, when running experiments, I can truly confirm that the above myths have been ‘confirmed; dads can cry and big men fall hard!