Three significant things happened last Friday. One: I publicly derided the Massachusetts compulsory health insurance laws as a scam in a comment on a friend’s Facebook status. Two: While inspecting my progress in the garden, Sara ordered Saebra to go put some shoes on before she steps on something and gets hurt. Three: Sara, in bare feet, stepped on the tines of an upturned garden rake, resulting in an immediate trip to the ER, and the need to make use of our compulsorily purchased health insurance. Isn’t it ironic? Don’tcha think?
When I was younger, and flip-flopped (that’s practically barefoot) I punctured my foot as well, on a nail. I had been chasing my brother around the house, probably more out of a desire to catch and kick-the-crap-out-of than “for fun”, and while negotiating my way at high speed through a pile of demolition from the recently installed patio, I missed the one giant nail sticking out of that one board. My foot went straight down onto it in one quick smack. At that moment, I made a quick search though my internal list of available words ending in “uck”, selected the one I felt was most appropriate to the situation, and let it fly. My momentum carried me forward. My left foot came down, my right foot was pulled off it’s skewer and when it hit the ground next I crumpled into a heap behind it. Cuz it HURT!!
Soon my neighbor was charging out of her back door in response to my worldly vocabulary, and she was the one who ended up not quite knowing what to do with me but doing a very thorough job of it until my dad just happened to come home for lunch, and packed me off to the ER. It was uncharacteristically nice of my neighbor to give any damn about my condition at all, considering how at the time my brothers and I had been engaged in an ongoing campaign of overt threats to eliminate their cat (whom we’d nicknamed “Dinner”, cuz we threatened to cook and eat it) because the damned thing wouldn’t stop pooping in our sandbox.
At the hospital, my brother (I still don’t remember which one, but you know who you are!) had to be evicted from the bedside because his detailed commentary on the unique grossness of the doctor inspecting and cleaning out the wound was rendering several hundred dollars worth of Novocaine completely useless. The nail had come just millimeters from going all the way through my foot, and the doctor even managed to pull a piece of the sole of my flip flops out of the wound. (I did not get to keep it.) After all that, I ended up spending a few weeks hobbling after my brothers, sadly unable to deliver previously promised ass-kickings, soaking my foot in hot salt baths, and playing up the sympathy angle for extra ice cream.
I mention all this because, as Sara’s current impaling predicament was beginning to unfold, maybe, just maybe, in the back of my unconsciousness mind I thought: Puncture wound in the foot. Hey, I remember that! Ooohhhh, wait. Ouch.
(but wait! there’s more!)
Best Imitation of Myself 