CAUGHT!!!

My wife came home from work yesterday, a little bit earlier than I expected. I was surprised, and as I jumped up I tried to throw on an air of nonchalance. “Oh, hi, baby, how are you doing?” I said, and I moved to kiss her hello. But then she stopped, looked around our apartment, and her eyes narrowed. My wife is not an unattractive woman, but when she wants to she can conjure up a fairly good imitation of Margaret Hamilton, the woman who played the Wicked Witch of the West. When she gives me this look, we call it a “Margareting.” She usually does it in jest, and we chuckle about it, but this time, it seemed, she was in earnest. She growled, low, like an angry cat issuing a warning. “You bastard…”
“Honey, I didn’t mean to, I swear to God…!”
“How could you?” She demanded. “I thought we went over this! You said you were going to…”
I cut her off, attempting to allay the damage I’d done. “I know, I know, I know, honey, and I’m sorry. I really am. I just got carried away, and .. well… you know, one thing led to another, and…” I gestured around myself futilely.
She dropped her bags, slumped into a chair, and her face fell into her hands for a long moment. I stood there, helpless to explain myself.
When at long last she looked up, she gazed around and sighed. The hardwood floors of our apartment gleamed. I’d spent an hour or so chasing all the bits and crumbs and detritus of ours and our 2-year old’s existence out of the corners. I’d vacuumed the rug, put away all the baby’s toys, and put the pillows on the couch back in order. The stacks of books and magazines that normally occupied our kitchen table, making it impossible to eat a meal without major rearranging first, had all been put back on the shelves, or in the magazine rack in the bathroom. The cloth placemats and napkins were neatly folded on the table, awaiting our next meal.
Her voice came out of her in a long, exasperated sigh. “You CLEANED!” she said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I suppose the laundry is done, too.”
At this point, I figured a full confession was my best bet. “Yeah,” I said.
“Folded?” She queried.
“Uh-huh.”
“Put away?”
“Yeah.”
“Kitchen?” she said, her voice and her eyebrows arching dangerously.
“Um….” Full confession was not looking like such a good move anymore.
“Kitchen??” she said again, her voice diving precipitously downward toward that cat-growl range again.
“Dishes are done.” I stammered. “I swept the floor. But I didn’t mop!” I said.
“You ASSHOLE!” she finally let loose. “I thought you were going to look for a job!!!”
“I tried to!” I said. “But… but…”
“But what?” she said. “I suppose this all started with you taking out the garbage.”
“Uh… kind of.” I said. “Then I kinda noticed that, as long as I was going to take out the garbage, I should probably get all the crap from off of the kitchen sink cleaned off first, and then next thing you know, I just kinda got carried away with it all. But I swear to God, I didn’t touch the bathroom!”
She ignored this feint. “And how long did it take you to do all this?” she said.
“Oh, not too long,” I said, lamely.
“Really? How long?”
“About two hours,” I said, lying through my teeth but trying to sound convincing. I was just praying she didn’t notice the two buckets drying on the front porch. Truth of the matter is, I’d spent 45 minutes on my hands and knees that afternoon scrubbing crusted, dried baby food off the floor in the dining room. I hoped she didn’t notice what I’d done to the baseboards. They reeked of Simple Green.
Turns out you can find a lot of things to do instead of job hunting. At last my wife got up and headed into the baby's room to drop off her bookbag. "You do this again, we're going to go see a counselor." she said.

DOIN' THE TIME WARP ON A BROKEN LEG

What happens in the next few seconds of this particular Sunday afternoon, October 5, 2008, is where things get all “Inception”-like, although that movie won’t come out until several years after this whole leggy-snappy thing happens to me. In telling this story of this thing that happened to me 2 ½ years ago, I have to tell you about a memory of something that had happened 3 years before that. And to do that, I have to reference yet another movie that came out 26 years before the incident in question, and maybe even reference a Superbowl from so long ago that…. Hell, the Cincinnati freakin’ Bengals were still relevant, that’s how long ago it was.
So here goes.
If you’ve ever made spaghetti at home, you’ve probably had the experience of picking up a good, thick handful of the uncooked noodles and snapping them in half all at once just before you dropped them into the pot. Well, as I attempted to slide into second base in the middle of a co-ed Sunday softball game in Burbank, California on an otherwise perfect afternoon, there was a cloud of dust, an ungodly pain, and that sound – a sound like spaghetti crunching and snapping – that my left ankle made. It was an awkward, stupid slide, and best as I can figure, my cleats just got caught in the hard dirt and something had to give. I knew instantly that I was hosed. And just to add insult to injury - literally - I think I was out, too.
So here’s what flashed through my mind. I reached down, and found that my left foot was… Oh, I don’t know, I guess you could say “off.” As in, hanging loosely at a very strange angle. Not what a good foot should be doing in the middle of a softball game. And strangely enough, the first thing I thought of was a trip to Montana I took about 3 years before that softball game happened. Coincidentally enough, that memory also involved a ballgame of sorts.
I’d been invited to spend a week with my friend Joe and his family during their annual gathering in Helena, Montana in the summer of 2005. Joe’s dad ran a couple of general stores in town, did well enough that he bought a pair of beautiful log homes on the Madison River, and every summer the whole family – Joe is the youngest of about 10 kids, 9 of them from his mother’s previous marriage (Joe’s dad was one brave sonofagun, I have to give him that. Maybe even as brave as Joe’s mother, who took her 9 children and left her abusive first husband with no job and no prospects. A while later, as the family lore goes, Joe’s father came calling on his soon-to-be wife for their first real date, and Joe’s older sister Judy, all of about 5 at the time, answered the door, looked up at the strange man and said, “Are you going to be our new daddy?” Joe is the only product of his mother’s second marriage) came and spent a couple weeks hanging out, fly fishing on the river, going on canoe trips, eating a lot and playing whiffleball in the front yard. It was during one of these whiffleball games that Judy, now in her 30’s and playing outfield, went running after a long fly ball that sailed over her head. What she failed to take into account was the fact that her visiting siblings had casually parked their cars pretty much wherever they pleased on the front lawn, and so it was probably inevitable that some sort of conflict between ballplayers and cars was eventually going to be played out. Score one for the cars. This particular conflict resulted in the rather gruesome sight of Judy’s right kneecap being shoved clear off the front of her knee, where most good kneecaps are usually found, and off to the side of her leg. Whereupon Judy, remembering what had happened to Mariel Hemingway, who played a track and field athlete who suffered a similar gruesome injury in a movie called “Personal Best” in 1982, simply grabbed the prodigal kneecap and shoved it back into place.
Judy didn’t walk off the field after that. I wound up picking her up and carrying her back into the log home myself (feeling quite the hero, I might add), and she spent the rest of that family reunion recuperating on the couch with a succession of ice packs, and eventually was walking very gingerly around the family manses.
So Judy, (and by extension, Mariel) was what I thought of as I reached down and found my foot sort of… off. (Okay, that’s actually a reference from “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life,” but I won’t delve too far into that one). So, without thinking too much about it, I grabbed a hold of my foot, and…
I’ll say this, shock is a wonderful thing. When your body finds itself all of a sudden in just waaaaaaay too much pain, its initial response is to say, “Oh, fuck this!” and it kinda just shuts things down. Of course, shock has the potential to kill you, but that’s something for the EMT’s to deal with. In any case, shock, I believe, and its numbing effects, is what allowed me to grab a hold of my left foot and attempt to put it back on again.
It didn’t work, really. However, the grinding of the shattered bones in my ankle was perfectly sufficient to remind me, in case I had entertained any thoughts whatsoever of eventually re-entering the game, that I was, in fact, well and truly hosed. I remember sticking my leg way up in the air. I think the idea was to keep my foot from coming into contact with anything, especially that treacherous patch of dirt in which I was lying.
Oh, the Superbowl reference. Go to Youtube and look up a guy named Tim Krumrie. He was a starting defensive lineman for the Cincinnati Bengals, the heart and soul of their defense really, when they went up against the San Francisco 49ers in Superbowl XXIII, a rematch of the loss they had suffered to those same 49ers (and that same perfect sonofabitch, Joe Montana) in Superbowl XVI. One particular play, the ‘Niners are running the ball from deep in their own territory, and Krumrie sticks his leg out in what looks like an attempt to trip the running back. What wound up happening was that Krumrie’s leg snapped in half just below the knee, and looked like a rubber dog toy as it flopped around, his foot turning backwards as Krumrie collapsed in agony on the ground.
Just in case you need another visual about my ankle.

HOW tough is it to find work???

So I'm standing in my living room this afternoon, and I said, to no one in particular, "Gee, I really need to do some vacuuming around here."

By the time I got to the closet in the baby's room to get the vacuum out, there was already a note on the door: "Thank you for choosing us. Unfortunately, we have already identified a candidate with more recent vacuuming experience. However, we will keep your application on file, and if another position which matches your skills and experience becomes available, we will be sure to contact you."

I SHOULD HAVE STARTED A BLOG

Friday, October 3, 2008 is a date I’m going to remember for quite some time. It’s certainly not as significant as some dates that would soon follow (more on that later), but I remember it simply because it was the last day of the last full-time, paid, and with-benefits week of employment I (so far) have ever had.

Of course, I didn’t know it at the time. That’s the funny thing about life-changing events, you almost never know they’re happening when they happen, but you sure as hell know about it later. For example, within two weeks of Friday, October 3, 2008, my son James was conceived.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

On Saturday, October 4th, I rode my motorcycle from Burbank, California down to San Diego. A buddy of mine from back in Ohio was in San Diego with his father, who was a member of a World War II military unit that was having a reunion. I joined up with the two of them, and later that night Roddey (my buddy) and I watched the much-heralded freshman quarterback Terrelle Pryor eke out a last-minute victory for Ohio State against Wisconsin. On Sunday, October 5^th, I stopped by to visit a cousin who lived near San Diego, and then I headed back up to Burbank to play in the last co-ed Sunday softball game I would ever play in.

Like I said, I didn’t know it at the time. It’s not like you’re graduating high school, where you know this is the last time you’re ever going to eat in that cafeteria. In fact, as I stood on first base with my teammate at the plate, my team behind by two runs but rallying nicely, thank you very much, I had no clue what lay in store for me some 45 feet away.

My teammate hit a shot to shallow left. I bolted to second. The opposing team’s left fielder, who had been playing close in to the diamond, fielded the ball cleanly and got off a throw to the second baseman. I knew the play was going to be close, so I opted to slide.

A few seconds later I was writhing in agony, my left foot flopping uselessly off of my leg.

To be continued...