Zero vs. Hero

I sprain my ankle and decimate a birthday cake.

New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez (who goes by the moniker "A-Rod") sprains his ankle and hits two home runs in one inning.

Keep off the grass

Our grass needed to be cut, but I had been putting the chore off for some time (excusably so, in my humble opinion, as my ankle is still a bit on the sprained side). This afternoon, I was sitting on the couch reading when I heard the sound of a lawnmower in the back yard. I limped to the window and saw my wife mowing the lawn. What a gal.

I reflected on this and was reminded of the deadbeat lawnmowing men in my paternal genetic lineage. I have never seen my father with a lawnmower, and the quantifiable reason why, I am told, goes a little something like this.

My folks were newlyweds and had just bought a house. My mother, whose father had been the primary lawnmower in his household, expected my father to be the primary lawnmower in his. She made the expectation clear to him. Apparently too proud to tell her that he had never before mowed a lawn, my father obeyed marching orders and went outside to cut the grass.

Moments, then minutes of silence passed. After some time, it seemed strange to my mother that no mower noise could be heard. When she peered through her window, she was shocked at what she saw: my father, sitting cross-legged in the grass. He apparently could not get the darn thing to start, and was sitting with the mower, blade-down, on his lap, tugging at the pull cord with all his might.

My mother burst forth from the front door, shouting, “No! No! No! Stop!!!”

Thankfully, he heeded her new command and stopped what he was doing; for this I am eternally grateful. Had he been successful in starting the mower and gotten those blades a turnin’ above his lap, I would surely not be here to blog about it.

He has never again attempted to mow the lawn. Probably a good thing.

Not for the squeamish.

For all those naysayers and accusers of embellishment.

This is my ankle, 9:00 PM EST.

But wait, there's more to blog about!

So last night, I was in the middle of composing a new blog post entitled “In Praise of Rulebreakers” thanking the anonymous fellows who were illegally driving down the road marked “authorized delivery vehicles only” (think: UPS, FedEx, singing telegrams) when I (birthday cake in tow) took the now infamous ankle-spraining tumble (see my previous entry). These two Samaritans stopped their car, thereby increasing the risk of being spotted and apprehended by campus law enforcement officers, and insisted on driving me to my lab.

Mid-blogging, the wife and I decided to go out for ice cream. I saved what I had written so far, and (with some pain) put on my shoes and socks. My wife and Watson (our faux labradoodle) were the first to go outside. By the time I had made it to the door, Watson had found the neighbor dog, and they were frolicking by our front steps. I reached down to pet the neighbor dog, when my uninjured ankle did a little wobble wobble. I kid you not: I sprained my second ankle in two days. This time, I fell the distance of two steps to the grassy lawn in front of our house.

“Are you okay?” my wife asked, rushing to help me up.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine. Let’s just get to the car,” I replied, hurrying to my feet, embarrassed by my most recent collision with the ground. Our neighbor hastened to the scene of the crash, but I quickly brushed off the dirt and grass, and darted (as best I could on two swollen, unyielding ankles) to the car.

This morning, I have two bruised ankles, and an ego to match. I probably won’t be leaving this couch for a while.

“Then at least I’d have something to blog about.”

Those were my penultimate words in the cell phone conversation I had with my wife moments before I got out of my car with the birthday cake she had finely crafted for a fellow lab member.

The cake was a culinary sensation. It was bi-layered and chocolate, stuffed with a vanilla-pudding-based banana cream filling, topped with delectable icing, and drizzled with chocolate fudge. A sight to behold, painstakingly assembled with meticulous attention to every last excruciating detail.

The night before, she had spent literally hours preparing and putting the finishing touches on the dessert. Opting against a standard Tupperware-style container for cake transport, she carefully packaged it within an optimally sized special cake box to prevent accidental contact with container edges, preserving detail along the confection’s perimeter.

I typically park about half mile from the lab. “Couldn’t you park any closer?” she had asked, fearing the distance was too great a span she could expect me to traverse without incident.

“Not unless I pay ten dollars. Relax, I’ll be careful.”

As I turned into the parking lot this morning, cake in tow, my cell phone rang. It was her. She wished to remind to me exercise extreme caution when transporting the precious cargo from door to door.

“Be careful,” she repeated. “You never know when a little mouse will trip you up and send you to the ground.”

“Ha,” I laughed, insulted by her doubt in my agility and coordination. I then uttered the dooming words at the title of this post and bid her goodbye.

Amused and slightly irked by her skepticism, I carefully gathered my belongings and the chocolate delight. Through the parking lot, down the steps of the garage, around the corner, I walked, gingerly, even daintily, watchful for curbs, mice, and distractions of all varieties. “Left, right, left, right,” I uttered to myself, concentrating alternately on the forward motions of each foot.

I must have been thinking about the wrong foot, or maybe it was a tiny mouse that scurried around my feet outside of my peripheral vision, because all of a sudden, I know not how it began, but I was falling— no, hurtling— forward. The pavement-aimed descent seemed to occur in slow motion. One thing was certain, though: I was not going to release my grip on the cake box. I began to lift the box (lovingly marked “this side up” to preempt careless transport or placement) over my head to prevent it from crashing to ground in front of me when—crunch—an intense pain exploded in my ankle. The rest of the plunge occurred in shaky-cam fast-forward as my limbs flailed uncontrollably and the box burst forth from my hands. It must have experienced about 2 seconds of weightless air-time before it crashed and rolled.

Before the falling object that was my person came to its final rest, my body parts strewn unnaturally in three dimensions, I realized what had was now happening: I had ruined the cake and fulfilled my own prophecy—I now had something to blog about.



For those interested in the rest of the story:

* My lab mates still happily devoured the dessert formerly known as chocolate cake. Fortunately, my ever-creative spouse, in unaccounted-for prescience, had separately packaged little signs that said: “Happy Birthday!” attached to popsicle sticks. Before serving the cakeslop, I neatly inserted them into the pudding/cake/banana amalgam.

* My ankle is sprained. I could place little weight on it after I fell. Tonight, it can bear almost none.

* Both my wife and the birthday girl forgive my misstep. Pretty hard to hold a grudge against a hobbling mess such as myself. (My wife insists: “Give us more credit. Even if you hadn’t hurt yourself, we wouldn’t have been mad.” She pauses. “Although, hurting yourself doesn’t hurt your cause.”)