When I die,
I want to go peacefully,
like my grandfather did
— in his sleep.
Not screaming,
like the passengers
in his car
Tag Archives: accident
How Did You Break Your Arm?
Even if you aren’t a skier, you’ll be able to appreciate the humor of the slopes as written in this account by a New Orleans paper.
A friend just got back from a holiday ski trip to Utah with the kind of story that warms the cockles of anybody’s heart. Conditions were perfect, 12 below, no feeling in the toes, basic numbness all over, the “tell me when we’re having fun” kind of day.
One of the women in the group complained to her husband that she was in dire need of a restroom. He told her not to worry that he was sure there was relief waiting at the top of the lift in the form of a powder room for female skiers in distress. He was wrong, of course, and the pain did not go away.
If you’ve ever had nature hit its panic button in you, then you know that a temperature of 12 below zero doesn’t help matters. So, with time running out, the woman weighed her options.
Her husband, picking up on the intensity of her pain, suggested that since she was wearing an all white ski outfit, she should go off in the woods. No one would even notice, he assured her. The white will provide more than adequate camouflage. So she headed for the tree line, began disrobing and proceeded to do her thing. If you’ve ever parked on the side of a slope, then you know there is a right way and a wrong way to set your skis so you don’t move. Yup, you got it. She had them positioned the wrong way.
Steep slopes are not forgiving, even during embarrassing moments. Without warning, the woman found herself skiing backward, out of control, racing through the trees, somehow missing all of them and onto another slope. Her derriere and her reverse side were still bare, her pants down around her knees, and she was picking up speed all the while.
She continued on backwards, totally out of control, creating an unusual vista for the other skiers.
The woman skied, if you define that verb loosely, back under the lift, and finally collided violently with a pylon. The bad news was that she broke her arm and was unable to pull up her ski pants. At long last her husband arrived, putting an end to her nudie show, then went to the base of the mountain and summoned the ski patrol, who transported her to a hospital.
In the emergency room she was regrouping when a man with an obviously broken leg was put in the bed next to hers.
“So how’d you break your leg?” she asked, making small talk.
“It was the damnedest thing you ever saw,” he said, “I was riding up this ski lift, and suddenly I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was this crazy woman skiing backward out of control down the mountain with her bare bottom hanging out of her clothes and her pants down around her knees. I leaned over to get a better look and I guess I didn’t realize how far I’d moved. I fell out of the lift.”
“So how’d you break your arm?”
What a Way to Go!
Pat and Mike work at the Guinness Brewery, and one day there’s an accident.
Pat calls Mike’s wife, Mary, and says: “Sure, and I hate to be tellin ya this, but there’s been an accident down at the Guinness.”
“Saints Preserve us,” says she, “is Mike alright?”
Pat responds, “I’d like to tell ya that, but it’d be a lie!”
“Ya don’t mean that me Mike’s been hurt?” says Mary.
“Sure, an it’s worse than that,” says Pat, “he’s fallen inta the beer vat and drowned!”
“Oh, well” says Mary, “At least it was quick, ya know he couldn’t swim a lick!”
“Oh, I wish I could be tellin ya that,” says Pat, “but it’s be a lie… He got out three times ta pee!”
Calling in Sick… A Cat Owner’s Story
Calling in sick to work makes me uncomfortable because no matter how legitimate my illness, because I always sense my boss thinks I am lying.
On one occasion, I had a valid reason but lied anyway because the truth was to humiliating to reveal. I simply mentioned that I had sustained a head injury and I hoped I would feel up to coming in the next day. By then, I could think up a doozy to explain the bandage on my crown.
In this case, the truth hurt. I mean it really hurt in the place men feel the most pain. The accident occurred mainly because I conceded to my wife’s wishes to adopt a cute little kitty
As the daily routine prescribes, I was taking my shower after breakfast when I heard my wife, Deb, call out to me from the kitchen. “Ed!” she harkened. “The garbage disposal is dead. Come reset it.”
“You know where the button is.” I protested through the shower (pitter-patter). “Reset it yourself!”
“I am scared!” She pleaded. “What if it starts going and sucks me in?” Pause. “C’mon, it’ll only take a second.” No logical assurance about how a disposal can’t start itself will calm the fears of a person who suffers from “Big-ol-scary-machine-phobia,” a condition brought on
by watching too many Stephen King movies.
It is futile to argue or explain, kind of like telling Lloyd Bentsen Americans are over-taxed. And if a poltergeist did, in fact, possess the disposal, and she was ground into round, I’d have to live with that the rest of my life.
So out I came, dripping wet and buck naked, hoping to make a statement about how her cowardly behavior was, not without consequence, but it was I who would suffer. I crouched down and stuck my head under the sink to find the button.
It is the last action I remember performing. It struck without warning, without respect to my circumstances. Nay, it wasn’t a hexed disposal, drawing me into its gnashing metal teeth. It was our new kitty, clawing playfully at the dangling objects she spied between my legs. She (“Buttons” aka “the Grater”) had been poised around the corner and stalked me as I took the bait under the sink. At precisely the second I was most vulnerable, she leapt at the toys I unwittingly offered and snagged them with her needle-like claws.
Now when men feel pain or even sense danger anywhere close to their masculine region, they lose all rational thought to control orderly bodily movements. Instinctively, their nerves compel the body to contort inwardly, while rising upwardly at a violent rate of speed. Not even a well trained monk could calmly stand with his groin supporting the full weight of a kitten and rectify the situation in a step-by-step procedure. Wild animals are sometimes faced with a “fight or flight” syndrome; men, in this predicament, choose only the “flight” option.
Fleeing straight up, I knew at that moment how a cat feels when it is alarmed. It was a dismal irony. But, whereas cats seek great heights to escape, I never made it that far. The sink and cabinet bluntly impeded my ascent; the impact knocked me out cold.
When I awoke, my wife and the paramedics stood over me. Having been fully briefed by my wife, the paramedics snorted as they tried to conduct their work while suppressing their hysterical laughter. My wife told me I should be flattered.
At the office, colleagues tried to coax an explanation out of me. I kept silent, claiming it was too painful to talk. “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?”
If they had only known.