November 2016

I'm walking across town to the emergency room at the general hospital, when
this older fellow notices that I'm carrying a step ladder. He gets up off his porch
and hobbles to his front gate. I'm thinking, he's either put a nail through the ball
of his foot or he broke his ankle when he was young and it never healed
properly, I decide on the later. I know this guy.
Oh. Sorry, you're probably wondering why I'm on my way to the ER. I
unfortunately put a piece of metal through one of my fingers and was unable to
extract it on my own. I know, you're wondering why I need a step ladder there? I
don't, it's the piece of metal that pierced my finger. Why am I walking? That's
easy, I couldn't fit the step ladder into the car.
 Anyway, back to this old guy, like I said, I know him. Well, I don't know his
name but I know his type. He's one of those "tough as nails" guys, and I think
this one might even be the hammer that hits those nails. His skin is like rhino
hide, he'll see a doctor once in his lifetime, at his birth. There will be one to
pronounce him dead too, but, because he's dead, technically that's still only
once. I can see he's broken his nose a couple of times, because it goes both
ways. Probably stuck his head in a bucket of ice to keep the swelling down, his
nose is still pressed against his right cheek. He's got a number of scars on his
head. It looks like his left ear has been frozen at least once. I'm sure he's
outdone me on accidents. He pulls out a cigarette, sure, why not blacken the
lungs as well. When he opens his mouth I can see he's only got two teeth, no
dentists in his life, probably pulls his own teeth with a pair of fencing pliers.
Even though one of the teeth is in the top and the other in the bottom, they are
not strategically situated, he wrenches his lower jaw to the left so he can hold
the cigarette between the two teeth so his lips can move while he talks to me.
That explains the orange stain running up the left side of his face to a discolored
eyebrow. He mumbles to me that he can free my finger from the ladder. Of
course, his left hand is missing the pinkie, the ring finger has only one knuckle,
the middle finger stops at the second knuckle, the pointer is intact, sans
fingernail. The right hand is practically a mirror image of the left, except, he's
only got a nubbin for a thumb on the right. It doesn't take me long to deduce his
method of freeing my hand from the ladder. He probably has one of those tree
branch cutters in his shed. Oh, sure, no need to walk to the shed, he has a pair
in his back pocket. I tell him my pain threshold is not high enough but he says
whiskey will take care of that. Did you guess? Yes, he has a bottle in his other
back pocket. I still beg off and graciously thank him for the offer. When I turn to
continue my walk to the ER he calls out to me...

Have a great day

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