Kickin' and screaming
It was a wicked, facing-the-other-way, flat-footed kick to the right quadricep.
A little higher and I would have perfectly understood how a watery-eyed Conrad Hurrell felt when he disappeared into the tunnel the other day only to return like you'd expect any New Zealand Warriors player to do on the park.
The only problem is I wasn't at a park, it wasn't rugby league and the offender wasn't some meat head.
No, I was in bed watching the World Cup soccer highlights and the errant foot belonged to my wife.
"Turn that damn TV volume down. Some of us are trying to sleep because we have jobs to go to," she had snapped.
Hey, I did, too, but something told me that wasn't the right time or place to put my point across no matter how much I thought my retort would have drawn a standing ovation from the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
I mean this sort of foul play was coming from a woman who only the night before was extolling the virtues of watching "a beautiful, what's his name again?" "Ronaldo," my elder daughter quipped, rolling her eyes while forking pasta into her mouth with a Dolmio grin.
Putting it down to her mother's mid-life crisis, she argued if the pretty boy slipped on a stiletto and earrings he'd pass off for a "girl".
I'm not going there.
I will, though, admit I deserved a kick that night. I was hollering at the TV in the wee hours of the morning, irate the referee wasn't pulling up predominantly defenders tugging on attackers' shirts.
What got my goat even more were players who were rolling about like someone had used pliers to extract their toenails but the second the ref awarded a free kick they were up and chasing the ball like nothing had happened.
I could go on, like someone forgot to play a team's national anthem and Iran and Nigeria snapped fans out of a beautiful nightmare with the tournament's first stalemate (nil all) on Tuesday and post-match interviews in the vernacular without translations in English.
Despite Portugal, including skipper Ronaldo, and Spain looking like disorganised schoolboy teams and neither hosts Brazil nor Argentina looking too convincing, hasn't it been a glorious cup?
This cup in Samba cities just doesn't do dreary, love.
In the opening round of matches at the 2010 South Africa World Cup 25 goals were scored in the eight pools of four teams.
The Brazil tourney had eclipsed that total with half the teams still to kick off.
That ballooned to 49 when Russian Aleksandr Kerzhakov scored the leveller in the 74th minute against South Korea in the cup's third draw (1-1) at the end of the first round yesterday from 16 games.
That's an average of 3.06 a game and all but six of the 32 countries have managed to find the net.
Tim Claudatos, a Hawke's Bay Today pundit making selections for this cup, understandably echoed the sentiments of some of the fellow six-member panellists before the first kick off that draws were imminent because "it was early days".
Interestingly enough, of the 19 out of 22 teams who got on the ref's scorecard at least 14 put the ball in the net before halftime.
Five teams clawing their way back to victory probably goes a long way to explaining why the stadiums are jam-packed, notwithstanding Thomas Muller's hattrick against a woeful Portugal.
It must be the envy of every other code wanting to fill world cup venues over a shorter duration.
It's too simplistic to say it's because it's too hot or because of the ball - which I agree appears to move like a hovercraft in the humidity.
It's more likely to be a shift in coaching philosophies and crowd intolerance.
Whenever any team start pushing the ball back towards their goalkeepers the fans jeer and boo.
Enough said.
Tit-for-tat goals add to the excitement, as the Yanks showed in their 2-1 win over Ghana.
Adroit coaches are employing myriad formations, akin to Ivory Coast injecting Didier Drogba from the bench to change the dynamics of the game to beat Japan 2-1 from a goal down.
World Cup reputations also took a hiding - Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Spain and Uruguay, to date.
Refs have flashed only three red cards - Uruguay, Honduras and Portugal.
Should Neymar have got one?
Absolutely in dishing out his premeditated elbow sandwich in the opener against Croatia but so should Croat defender Dejan Lovren, who wrapped himself around Brazilian striker Fred like a cheap suit before releasing him just in time for the ref to spot him.
Take a bow Japan whistle blower Yuichi Nishimura for your ruling. It scarcely matters whether Lovren grabbed him "lightly" or not.
Want to hold a player then take up wrestling, rugby league or ballroom dancing.
Perhaps what struck me as peculiar was Croat goalkeeper Stipe Pletikosa who seemed to have his goal covered but couldn't stop the shots.
He won't be picking up Oscars any time soon.
On the other hand, Mexico gloveman Guillermo Ochoa was sublime in yesterday's second scoreless draw against the hosts.
Overall, as the Greeks discovered, it's time to discard the bunker mentality or end up as a relic in Athens.
Hey, even Roy Hodgson and England are fast coming to that realisation.