I saw this commercial on TV the other night, and nearly gave myself whiplash shaking my head in disbelief. In fact, I had to go online to check it out, just to convince myself I hadn’t dreamt the whole thing up.

And it turns out it was real. It’s called the Wii Fit, a new product from Nintendo that is more or less a video game combined with a fitness routine. It looks a white pad — a super-fancy bathroom scale — that can read your movements and translate them onto the TV screen where you see yourself doing anything from yoga and snowboarding to strength training and, I don’t know, strutting around with your virtual muscles. I assume you can say things to virtual exercise babes like, “Hey, pretty mama, want see my serratus magnus?” (I have no idea what muscle that is, but if I had a virtual self with virtual exercise babes, I would definitely say it.)

The Wii Fit essentially brings the world of video games together with exercise, which is kind of scary considering that video games have more or less killed exercise for so many kids.

Now, let me stop for a minute: Some of it is kind of cool. The technology is pretty far out — this little device, with the help of your Nintendo, can help improve your posture while you exercise or keep track of your progress. It knows what you’re doing, and can help you do it better. That’s amazing, and much cheaper than a personal trainer who is just going to look down on you and call you a “detestable monkey” when you try to skip out on a few reps. In a world where people need to exercise more and get into better shape, anything that helps do that is a good thing.

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I don’t know why it caught my eye, or captured my attention. Maybe because it gave insight into the psyches of our three presidential candidates. Or maybe because my own signature is so horrid and erratic — comparable to what an electrocuted chicken might scratch out if given a pen.

It was a news story I saw online that analyzed the signatures of McCain, Obama and Clinton in an attempt to mine a wealth of new information about the candidates, especially after the Magic 8-Ball revealed so little.

I read the piece, fascinated. It told about how Clinton’s signature was written as if she were dodging sniper fire, how McCain’s when decoded said, “Age is 95 percent mental, and 5 percent how high you wear your pants,” and Obama’s stressed his main campaign theme by changing styles from one letter to the next.

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Physical therapy … The final frontier. These are the voyages of a man’s punctured thigh as it explores strange new sensations and grueling trips on the stationary bike

Oh, and don’t forget electro-shock therapy! Shoot, this is a science fiction movie waiting to happen.

After six long weeks, physical therapy means I can walk, I’m almost healed and I can all-but put this long saga to bed. Unfortunately, I’m still left with a rather nasty scar from a surfboard fin that smiles at me and snickers. (It is great for show-and-tell, though.)

I’ve been seeing a physical therapist I know, Joe Webb, and I figured since we were friends he would cut me some slack, throw me some bones and write me get-out-of-work notes so I could play hookie. I think my first words to him were, “Just show me some stretches I can do with a beer in one hand and a remote control in the other.” I think his first words to me were, “Come on back to my torture chamber.”

I should have run right then, but well I couldn’t. They would have hog-tied me and carried me in.

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By the time you read this, it will have been six weeks since a fin on my surfboard punched a whole in my thigh, coming precariously close to the femoral artery and pretty much making April a blur of doctor’s visits, stumbles on crutches and trying to figure out how to pull medical tape off of legs that are hairier than a clan of grizzly bears.

As I can see the end of this long episode now that I’m off of crutches, on to physical therapy, and finally able to look at my leg without spitting out words that my 2-year-old daughter is surely storing away to reuse at school there are some thanks than I need to share that haven’t been shared enough.

People often come up to ask how I’ve been, how I’m doing, and to tell me how sorry they are to hear that, well, essentially my stupidity finally caught up with me. They say it much nicer, and with much more sincerity. I’m always appreciative, and it’s nice that people care.

But the thanks goes to the person who really deserves most of the credit. The person who had no say in this whole matter. I injured myself, and I had to suffer through it. Maybe one day they will invent the equivalent of carbon credits for injuries where you can pay someone else to trudge through it for you. Until then, you make the mistake, you pay the price.

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We are such strange beings, us parental units. Things we would never have done in our former lives — that we would have turned up our noses and snorted at — we now do freely. Things that seem so outlandish, ridiculous, and frankly, disgusting.

Take for instance the other day at pre-school as we dropped my two-year-old daughter off. I was in the passenger seat of the car giving her a kiss goodbye. My wife was carrying her and I noticed a little something in the little girl’s nostril. It was a “UNO” — an unidentified nasal object. I couldn’t let her go into school like that, and after failing myself to extract it, my wife — the old pro — went in for the kill, sans tissue. (We were already late and unprepared for duty such as this.)

“Now what do I do with it?” she asked, stumped.

Then, even shocking myself, I said, “Here, give it to me. I’ll figure something out.”

My wife thanked me and trudged off with child, leaving me with the UNO.

“Now what do I do with it?” I thought.

But that’s the life of a parent. Never in my wildest imagination — not in some crazed hallucinatory delirium brought on by spoiled fruit or bad fish — could I ever have pictured this: me sitting in a car staring at a “boogie” on the end of my finger. I couldn’t even have ever imagined myself being so selfless, so thoughtful, and shoot, so brave!

“I’ll take a toddler boogie for you, honey,” is not the kind of line you would have heard from Bogart. I’m still shocked it came from me.

But there I was, and serious. That’s love. That’s sacrifice. That’s being a parent.

And that’s kind of what makes it fun. The things that you will do for one another.

My dad left a message on my answering machine one day. He was out with my 14-year-old sister shopping for fishnet stockings that she needed for a part in a high school play.

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