I almost broke a nail on the weekend.

It was a very close call.

And it hurt.

A lot.

I suppose it was my fault for attempting to play sport with my hard-grown talons, but hey – when destiny calls, there is only one answer.

Except it might not have been so much destiny calling as a little kid whose kick had gone wide.

And I might not so much have been playing sport as walking past other people who appeared to be playing sport.

Sort of.

There was a ball.

So that counts as sport, right?

Anyway, my moment of glory came when this little kid decided he was David Beckham in a World Cup final and belted the beejezus out of this ball.

And much like Beckham’s hair, the ball took on a life of its own and decided to go in the opposite direction to where this kid had aimed.

Not that it was really his fault.

I’m one of those unfortunate souls whose head has an uncanny ability to attract flying objects.

If there is a football, tennis ball, frisbee, bat, bird, cricket ball, slinky, paper airplane, giant spider, falling star or randomly flying food in the vicinity of me, then chances are it will be heading straight for my melon.

I’m also the person that the crazy man decides to sit down next to on public transport, but that’s a story for another time.

So this kid’s dad starts screaming for me to watch out and, like an idiot, I stop and watch this ball head towards my face.

And at the last moment, some latent coordination gene kicks in and I raise my hands to catch it.

Except I have the hand-eye coordination of Mitch playing soccer and the ball bounced off my fingers, bending back my nail and sending my hand smacking back against my face, while the ball continued on to the water behind me.

And the stars in my eyes and the pain in my finger took me straight back to my aborted attempt as a Year 5 basketball star.

Basketball is supposed to be a non-contact sport.

Except if you are a Year 5 girl who has just grown a centimetre of excess nail, and then it becomes a free-for-all.

Seriously – you try holding on to the ball when the amazon from the opposite team not only appears to have the same doctor as the Chinese swim team but has also just discovered the joys of manicuring.

So I decided that I had obviously been misled and once the gaping wounds on my hands and fingers healed, I decided to try netball, which I had been assured by several sources was most definitely a non-contact sport.

And I’m sure it is.

Except when women are playing it.

Which is why I took up hockey. And found that sport is a hell of a lot safer when you’re holding a big wooden stick.

And I also found that that big stick is fabulous for warding off attacks from flying objects.

At the very least it would have given that kid second thoughts about laughing his own head off at me as I cradled my very nearly broken nail.