You probably wouldn’t be able to guess, but I was attacked by ninjas this morning. Yea, I know, hard to believe. It was for me too. It’s been a pretty strange week altogether, though. So, in a way, I probably could have seen something like this coming.

I mean, take Monday. Monday, I lost my pinky toe when my foot was run over by a rickshaw. I mean, that’s a freak accident, but those things do happen. But then, on Tuesday, I was visiting an old friend at the zoo, right? Her name is Cindy, lovely brunette I dated back in the day. Anyway, Cindy was gored to death by a rogue ostrich. Yea, I know, I didn’t really think ostriches could gore either, but I saw it with my very own eyes. And then on Wednesday, I was getting some turkey at the deli, when just out of the blue, the guy burst into flames. Now, that was when I started thinking it was more than just coincidence. But then again, what can you really do about freak rickshaws, ostriches and spontaneous combustion?

Well, like I said, today, Thursday, I was attacked by ninjas. Let me set this up for you: I got out of bed, changed the bandage on my toe stump, and limped out the door for my morning hobble. Then, just as I start shuffling down the sidewalk, out pop a good twenty ninjas. And these guys were, like, ninja ninjas, you know? Throwing stars, katanas, grappling hooks, wearing black clothing that was a little too tight around the groin region. Real ninjas. Well, they were sort of real ninjas. I guess it’s worth mentioning they were all one-legged ninjas.

But still ninjas. It’s not like a glass-blower isn’t a glass-blower anymore if he gets his spleen removed, or a tax attorney stops being a tax attorney if loses an eye. So I suppose one-legged ninjas are still ninjas all the same. It was just a little peculiar, since I started off thinking that ninjas weren’t real to begin with and now I was confronted with the presence of one-legged ones. But I suppose I am getting off topic.

So there I am in my jogging suit and bandaged foot with twenty one-legged ninjas circling me. One of them shouted something. I tried to get what he was saying, but I wasn’t really up on my Japanese. It was a really good thing that the ninjas had subtitles with them. Apparently, the ninjas thought I killed their master or something like that. The translation was pretty crappy. Well, this got me to thinking pretty heavily. I didn’t recall having killed anyone lately, or even at all. I figured they had the wrong guy, but I didn’t want to deprive them of their chance for blood vengeance. I mean, I do sleep walk, so it could have happened. So, I ask them back who their master was in the rudimentary Japanese that I do know. I actually said something closer to “Who was the chicken I rarely electrocuted?” But I think they got the point anyway. Well, one of the ninjas shouted something back. The subtitle said, “You killed Master He-Who-Eats-Shoe-Laces-With-Wagging-Tongue-of-Seven-Deaths!” which I figured meant a dog. After a minute of pondering, as well as dodging a few shuriken, I suddenly realized what the confusion was. They weren’t looking for me after all. They were looking for my neighbor, Steve, who euthanized his dog on Tuesday because it lost all its limbs in a skiing accident. I told them so in the best Japanese I could.

Lucky for me, out comes Steve. He looks at me, then at the plethora of one-legged ninjas. He smiled and said hello, which apparently in Japanese means something along the lines of “I killed your master.” Well, they proceeded to hack him into little pieces. With their blood oath completed, the ninjas departed, and I went on with my routine. After all, in a crazy world like this, it doesn’t really hurt to have a routine.