Impaled

I have several talents, gifts, and life skills which I can say, with all possibly humility, that I am quite good at.

One) I can tread water for an extremely long period of time despite always being fairly out of shape and despite the fact that the kind of swimming I’m capable of is the type that attracts sharks to wounded and dying animals.

Two) I am excellent at remembering numbers. I can recall off the top of my head: my social security number, my passport number, my drivers license number, my three bank account numbers and pins, my husband’s social security and drivers license numbers, his bank account number and pin (very handy), the birthdates of nearly every person whose birthday I’ve ever known, including friends from as far back as first grade, and their phone numbers from as far back as first grade, and the number of almost every person in the neighborhood I’ve ever called. Am I good at working with numbers (a.k.a. the nightmare that is math)? Nope. Remembering them? Ya, somehow they just stick.

Three) Tying a sari. Yes, a sari. When I lived in southern India, saris were the thing. I suppose I could have dressed like a tourist and just worn jeans (Are you kidding me? HOT!) or a long frumpy skirt (they did abound since it was the 90’s). Shorts were out of the question. Legs are NOT to be shown in India. Bare midriffs? Sure. Occasional old lady breasts who forgot to wear a shirt under their saris? Yep. But legs? Oh no. So I wore the sari. It was like dress up. For 4 months. And it was fun. And despite the fact that the women in the village untied and retied my sari on a regular basis whilst rolling their eyes and speaking quickly and discouragingly to each other in Tamil to indicate the stupidity with which I had tied my sari, I WAS good at it.

One thing that is not a natural gift? A talent I was not blessed with? Something that I am downright horrible at? Stomaching the sight of wounds. It’s not the blood. The blood certainly makes things worse, but just knowing that someone or some thing has a wound makes me go a little weak. And then I get this funny feeling in my knees where they sort of shiver down the bone. Then this ache radiates out from my chest, kind of like heartburn but hotter, and it shoots down to my feet and hands. Blood pumps to my face. It’s not pleasant. I try to avoid it. Despite an otherwise very hearty constitution, I could never NEVER work in a medical field.

So you can imagine my horror today when I stepped on this:


Here, let me put it into perspective for you:



There. Now let me explain. I walked out of my bedroom, took one step, and felt a sharp pain in my foot. I looked down to see about ½ inch of metal protruding from my heel. (You’ll notice that that piece of metal is about 1 ½ inches long). I went to flick it out of the surface of my skin as I have done hundreds of times before after stepping on a sand burr or the pickery horse chestnut things that fall from my horse chestnut tree or a tack. But this one didn’t fall out. So I pulled, and ONE FULL INCH OF THAT THING PROCEEDED TO COME OUT FROM MY HEEL. You can't even imagine how many milliseconds that took. It felt like FOREVER that I was pulling and it was still coming out. Do I need to describe to you again the sensation that came over my body? The tingles? The aching heartburn, the knee twitches? No? Well, then I'll just say that
I felt like I had just removed my own liver. GAG.

And now I am hobbling around on one foot because, dangit, puncture wounds KILL. I have cancelled my work out. I have cancelled my dance class. I am currently negotiating the cancellation of all my household chores and dinner making. ( I’ll keep you posted on how that turns out. ) In place of all that loveliness, I have scheduled a visit to my lovely doctor’s office for a lovely tetanus shot. Guess how much I love shots? Yep. You guessed it. They’re my favorite. Maybe I’ll describe THAT in detail to you tomorrow. Assuming the ordeal doesn’t just do me in.

Now, who is bringing in meals?