Friday, February 12, 2010

Most accidents occur in the home.

Last night I opened one of my kitchen cabinets to put away some dishes, but I forgot to close the door.

I have a short attention span, but I've only found it to be a problem since I graduated from college 12 years ago. Still, that's a dozen years, and the rise of the Internet as a part of everyday life probably hasn't helped.

In case you're just tuning in, I'm blaming the Internet for my short attention span, and I'm blaming my short attention span for my decision to interrupt the activity in progress—putting away dishes—in order to dust my breakfast table.

At the time I was thinking, "I'd better do that before I forget." But in the process of not forgetting, I forgot to close the kitchen cabinet door. That's why, when a spine from the little cactus on my breakfast table (my
only table, and it doubles as a desk) pricked my finger, I walked over to the sink to rinse it off.

That's when I ran right into the kitchen cabinet door.

I didn't turn around and bang my head into it. No, I walked directly into it. How did I not see it?

It reminded me of when I was six and was jumping into a pile of leaves with a friend at his dad's house after kindergarten one day. On my second or third jump I was running toward the pile of leaves when suddenly I fell backward onto the ground—I'd hit a metal bar that was right above my line of sight.
That accident left me with some stitches and a scar above my left temple. And now that I'm bald, the scar is in plain sight on my forehead.

I don't think last night's accident will leave a scar, and the cleanup didn't require more than a Band-Aid or four, but I was left with a gash* on my right temple, and over the next few days I'm sure I'll get lots of reactions like "What did you do to your head?"

Well, clearly I got in a fight with one of my kitchen cabinets. Unfortunately, it won.

* The gash above John McClane's (Bruce Willis) right eyebrow in the featured promotional still from 2007's Live Free or Die Hard doesn't resemble mine at all in terms of point of impact. His postaccident facial expression, however, is a perfect match.

2 comments:

  1. Nice avatar. Do you think it could pass for a scar from a bar fight?

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  2. Nah, the gash has already faded. You can still see where the skin split, but you have to get up close. What a shame ...

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