Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll chronicles being NIBBLED TO DEATH BY DUCKS — A Short History of Pathetic Injuries. She writes:

I have a current injury that sticks out like a sore thumb. Because it IS a sore thumb. I was washing my blender after making a wretched “Green” Smoothie recipe that turned an unappealing khaki color when I added the blueberries. Some things taste better than they look. This was not one of them. I threw it out. As I was washing the sharp metal blades, I rammed one of the blades under my right thumbnail. Naturally, I am right-handed.

I am famous as a fast healer. But the dang cut has taken a long time to heal because I keep busting it open again. Hey, it turns out that our opposable thumbs are really used a lot! Try typing, texting, breaking and separating eggs, zipping up your jeans or even flossing your teeth with a painful little divot in your thumb. The dental floss keeps digging into the cut.

Now I know millions of people are in terrible accidents, in burn units, enduring surgeries, brutal chemo, combat injuries and worse. So I promise you I am completely aware there’s no comparison. But it did get me pondering the vast number of MINOR injuries that one sustains in a lifetime. It’s a miracle that any of us survive to adulthood. I will mention but a few. We’ll skip the extremely premature birth and the weigh-in at 2 lbs., 12 oz. After leaving the relative safety of the incubator, it went downhill quickly.

When I was 3, Daddy was helping me hold a Roman Candle on the 4th of July and it exploded in our hands. Burns, but no serious injuries. I was off fireworks privileges and relegated to Sparklers for life. Later that year I decided to put all my dollies into my doll buggy and wheel them down the stairs into the basement. It went well for about half the staircase, then considerably less well. A few bruises and contusions. No head injuries except to the dolls.

A few years later, I was at Grandma’s and some misfiring synapse told me it would be fun to jump from about the eighth step to the floor. Alas, I scraped my back on the door jamb and, like a banked pool shot, went in an entirely different direction than I had planned. I definitely didn’t stick the landing. Sprained ankle, back and wrist. Again, no head injuries.

Waiting for the head injury? About 11 years old, pitching sandlot baseball. Took a line drive to the forehead, knocked out cold. When I came to, nobody was around. The neighbor boys thought I was dead and fled. Not to get help, certainly — just to get outta Dodge before Daddy got there. Bad headache, amazing bruise, but no lasting ill effects. If I had a concussion, its effects were indistinguishable from my regular behavior.

Later that summer, while mowing the lawn with our old-fashioned rotary hand-mower, a big clump of grass got stuck in the blades, which froze up. I reached down, yanked on the grass and the blades spun just fine and almost took off my index finger. That one did require medical help, first in removing the grass lodged in my finger and then in several stitches.

But that summer was Heaven compared to the summer of seventh grade. The day before Memorial Day my mother had asked me to return a pair of shoes to a friend from whom she had borrowed them. I hopped on my bike to ride the few blocks. There was no basket, so I was carrying the shoebox under one arm and steering with the other.

Unbeknownst to me, the little girl across the street ran out and jumped on the back fender of my bike. In rural Minnesota that ride was referred to as “giving someone a buck.” It threw off my already precarious balance and down we went, bike, kid, shoes and me – all on my left ankle, which broke. Since I had only progressed about 50 feet on my errand, I hopped back to the house. Sometimes it is not true that the journey is more important than the destination. Mother was hosting a ladies’ coffee party and was somewhat annoyed that I was back so soon, whining about some hurt ankle. She had no idea of the extent of the injury.

I hopped to the den in some discomfort and when next she checked on me, my ankle was about twice its normal size and I was semi-delirious with pain. She screamed, called my father home from the drugstore, and off we hopped to the ER. They put a cast on which wasn’t removed until just before Labor Day. Not only did I spend the entire summer in a cast but – are you ready for this? – I had POISON IVY on the leg when they put on the cast.

As an adult I have thought often about that incident and found it interesting that nobody would have ever considered litigation. Can you imagine today? People would sue the kid’s family, the Schwinn company, and probably the company that made the shoes. Back in those quaint days, it was “one of those things” that happens to kids, some more than others.

A year later, I was at my friend’s cabin on Lake Miltona and we were playing hide and seek in the dark. I was viciously attacked out of nowhere by a barbed wire fence. I didn’t get stitches, but probably should have as the cut was wide and deep. I still have an impressive scar.

Most of my recent adult injuries have been of the more humiliating kind. Geezer injuries. Falling just crossing the street — on my feet one minute, on my hands the next. Losing my balance and falling into a cactus. (Another scar!) A strained “glute” from “stepping wrong”. Stepping wrong? Yes. It CAN be done, but only by a skilled professional. A shockingly painful repetitive stress injury from maniacal embroidery. Do you think a person could make that UP? Trying to finish a quilt for my niece’s new baby and embroidering for 17-18 hours a day. “Nothing in moderation” is my lifelong motto.

Perhaps most mortifying of all was my “Sudoku” injury. Bent over the table for several hours at an odd angle, working on a Six-Star puzzle, I got a lower back spasm that lasted for three days. Some people hurt their backs carrying wounded soldiers to safety, some people hoist cars off accident victims, but it takes a real hero to hurt herself doing a pointless Japanese puzzle. At least I am told that Sudoku helps prevent Alzheimer’s.

Which is unfortunate, as I was considering running for President and clearly dementia is now a resume enhancer. I hope to get my son hooked up with several foreign concerns. He’s learning Chinese AND Ukrainian and promises 10 percent to The Big Grrrll. Possibly upwards of 60 million legitimate voters CONSCIOUSLY and ACTUALLY did vote for that corrupt, senile husk. THERE is the ultimate injury — to the body politic. Especially to the wobbly case for universal suffrage.

The decisive votes from the dead, the paid for, the illegals, the felons, the ones unmailed, and others were just to show they can do anything to us they please. The massive steal was blatant because they meant it to be. Nota bene.