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 hearkened. "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-machinephobia," a condition brought on by watching
too many Stephen King movies. It is futile to argue or explain.
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.