Grace Abounds!

The other day, Mandy and I were talking about some of the goofy things that have happened to us, to other members of our family and the topic of accidents came up. She was remembering how, on either my first or second day on campus at Penn State, she had a little mishap while running with some dogs (yes the four-legged variety) over on the road behind us and fell, splitting her knee wide open. My ex-sister-in-law's aunt happened to be nearby, checked her leg and determined she needed stitches so she took her to the emergency room and then called my older daughter to come pick Mandy up -cause "Aunt Sue" couldn't sign for them to treat Mandy. Of course, this was back way before cell phones so there was no way they could reach me on campus, no way I could be contacted until I arrived at work later that day. By that time, it was all over but the shouting, Mandy had nine stitches in her leg and we ultimately chuckled a good bit about this accident later too -mainly over all the confusion.

Then there was the time older daughter was washing dishes and broke a glass in the dishpan. She ended up with fourteen stitches in the top of her right hand. Heck of a way to try to get out of washing dishes, wouldn't you say? Either that, or just a bad case of "dishpan hands" maybe.

My son broke his arm -actually, his right wrist too. He managed to do that feat by -are you ready for this -jumpin off an old refrigerator! It was sitting by the deck on the house where we used to live so the top of the refrigerator was pretty much even to the floor of the deck and he decided -in his infinite wisdom -to climb out there and jump off the darned thing. The purpose of this venture? Why, to practice his broad jump, what else!

Then, not to be outdone by my kids, I once caught my right hand in the meat slicer at work while cleaning it. Sliced a good chunk out of the middle finger -yes, the really important one that is often used in many conversations -and that warranted my first ride in the back of an ambulance as they took me to the hospital emergency room for several stiches inside the finger and on the outside too. Older daughter had to be found that night -about 2 a.m. -to come to the E.R. and pick Mama up from that event.

Back in 1999 -on the Fourth of July, as a matter of fact -I fell while doing inventory at work. Slipped on a wet floor in the walk-in cooler as I was going into the freezer and broke MY right wrist! Ah yes, yet another ride to the E.R. in the good old ambulance and again, older daughter to the rescue.

In April of 1989, on the very first Sunday I had off in almost four months, I managed to bugger myself up -yet again. This time, I was sitting here in my living room, with my right leg curled under my butt -my normal sitting position (matter of fact, as I type this now, that's how my right leg is positioned.) This would have been ok (I think) except that I also fell asleep sitting like that and was awakened by the telephone ringing. As I got up to answer the phone, having been rudely awakened ya know, I stumbled my way to pick up the ringing thing and as I did that, my right foot sort of doubled under on me. Seems that although the rest of my body woke up, the right foot hadn't followed suit. As the foot doubled under, I heard -and felt - a pop along with some excruciating pain. Was not exactly friendly to the caller on the other end either -asking to talk to one of my kids, none who were present and accounted for at the time, of course.

I slammed the phone down, looked at the throbbing foot which already had this nice puffy bump forming and decided, like it or not, I was gonna have to get my fat self off to the emergency room to have it checked out. The x-rays showed I had broken a bone in the upper part of my right foot!

They put a lovely walking cast on my foot, gave me a pair of crutches to use too and sent me on my way home. I drove myself home with the big old cast on my right foot and I betcha my neighbors had a darned good laugh too if they saw me trying to maneuver getting down the front steps outside with these freaking crutches.

And all I can think of with respect to my foot injury is that I'm sure it was a darned good thing I wasn't wearing any Manolo Blahniks or I surely would have broken my ankle or maybe even higher up than that, and much worse!

Grace should have been my middle name, ya know.