A Day in the Life

A true story, I fell down and smacked my nose on my bathtub. I called in at work and went to the emergency room, where many had a good laugh at my recalling of the events. I went to update my driver’s license, since I had the day off and still have the picture of my face on the ID, turned ever so subtly to the side, so as not to showcase the swelling or blackening of my eye.


A Day In The Life

So, I'm taking a shower Thursday morning, around 5:30--just getting ready for another day at the salt mines. I drop the soap--this is not unusual, it is soap, it is wet and it is slippery. Yet, everytime it happens, I have to smile at the thought of all those prison movies that make great hay at the expense of the soap droppers, but I digress.

Having thrown my back out a couple of weeks back, I bend over to get the dropped bar of soap very gingerly, of course not wishing to further injure my still-sore lower lumbar. At this point, I should mention that I had recently cleaned the bathtub, ridding it of the persistent grime that always manages to insinuate its way into what should, by all logic known to man, Christ and everything holy, the cleanest possible place in the house. Cleaning the tub makes the tub slippery, which is, I guess, natural, because the cleaning implement is generally soap, it is wet and it is slippery.

So, there I am, gingerly kneeling on what turns out to be most of one foot, when the world goes crazy. The most of one foot that I am balanced upon slips out from beneath me with a speed that is incomprehensible by anything other than those slo-motion cameras that capture the moment of a golf club head's impact upon the ball and the subsequent smooshing of the golf ball into an oblong rather than round object before it's flight into the woods, rough, trap or fairway, but I digress. Reaching for the soap as my foot betrays me and beats a hasty retreat into the air leaves me with no hands whatsoever above the wall of the tub, thusly providing me with absolutely no means of slowing the impact that awaits my face (which I am nearly certain bears a resemblance to those old films of the astronauts in G-Force
training, with the cheeks all blown out and nothing but a feral panic in the eyes). So, at whatever rate a 200 pound object falls to the earth--I am no physicist, I have no idea of the exact rate of speed (Some say a feather falls at the same rate as a bowling ball--I beg to differ)--My nose and right cheekbone smash into the rim of the bathtub.

Within milliseconds--again, I was not wearing a stopwatch--I do not usually time my showers, but I can say with some certainty that it happened very quickly, the tub turned into a scene reminiscent of "Psycho"--blood everywhere, me flailing about, screaming like a baby seal, soap in my hair and scrambling for purchase. I grab the pair of shorts that I had jettisoned before entering the torture chamber that was the shower and apply direct pressure to the spurting faucet that had been my nose just moments before. Screaming gave way to cursing as I looked around at the Tate-LaBianca-like scene that I had created without the benefit of a single butcher-knife, axe, chainsaw. Yes, using nothing more than the blunt, and surprisingly unyeilding surface of the bathtub's wall, I had been able to throw enough blood, snot, and what I could only assume was my brain around the bathroom to make Quentin Tarentino swoon. Eventually, I was able to stem the flow of blood and cram a couple of rolls of toilet paper up my nostrils, finish rinsing my head off and clean up the bathroom, lest Taggart arrive home to the scene and assume that I had wrestled, bested and butchered a wild Javelina in the bathroom. Again.

I made it to the emergency room and six hours later was released with a clean bill of health and a man-sized headache, with nothing broken but my spirit and my pride. I have been telling most that I was breaking up a fight between three sturdy Hooter's girls who were fighting over my affections and caught a stray beer stein in the face. So, please keep this to yourself. How was your week?