Five elephants were kicking basketballs at me, as they barreled in my direction at full speed. I leapt back and forth, attempting to block their shots from landing in the soccer net.

The crowd seated in the Guizhou Forest Wildlife Park Elephant Carnival's bleachers was cheering.

But I couldn't see them - or see much of anything, really - as the animal trainers had confiscated my eyeglasses before putting me in front of this firing squad of athletic pachyderms.

You know what? Elephants can kick pretty hard.

The ridiculousness of the situation I found myself in was compounded by the fact that the seam of my pants had hours before split like a banana peel.

This meant that during the soccer match, my pants were flimsily held together by some loose cord and a bit of thread.

The split had happened hours before on a golf course. My sixth time teeing off, I had heard - and felt - a massive rip. I then looked down, horrified, to see the lap of my pants separated, either side gently flapping in the wind.

Fortunately, only one guy had witnessed the mishap. So I immediately grabbed my bag, carrying it in front of me to conceal the damage. I slipped discreetly into a restroom and rummaged through my bag to see what I could find to improvise repairs, MacGyver style.

I grabbed a lighter, some cigarettes, and an umbrella with a cord attached to the handle. I then burned cigarette holes through the cloth of both sides of the split, threaded them together using the cord and prayed the improvised stitching would hold.

Fortunately, soon after I left the restroom, the man who'd witnessed the embarrassing event reappeared and whisked me into a private room, where he produced a real needle and a few inches of white thread. He fixed the problem, but I emerged with my pants looking like Frankenstein's forehead.

To prevent further tears, I tried to walk gingerly for the rest of the day.

But taking such precautions was impossible at the elephant show.

Of course, when I first arrived as a spectator at the elephant carnival show, I had no inkling I would soon be called down to the field to join in the performance.

I certainly didn't imagine I would soon be hurling myself in front of basketballs punted by several enormous pachyderms - a tableau I could hardly see through the haze of severe near-sightedness.

Over the crowd's cheers, I could hear a small tearing sound as I lunged to and fro. With all eyes on me, I was dreading the seemingly inevitable big riiiiiiiip and subsequent mortal embarrassment.

But I figured there was nothing I could do about it, so I just did my best to keep the rapid-fire barrage of basketballs out of the net.

When it was all over, I was given a heart-shaped medal, my glasses and a round of applause.

Once bespectacled, I inspected my trousers and discovered the tearing sounds had merely been false alarms.

The crowd remained unaware of my clothing problems, and the elephant show hadn't made a Dumbo out of me. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and vowed to find a new tailor.

(China Daily 09/05/2008 page19)