Seriously...Only Mark!!

I come from a clumsy family...it's no secret. There was, for instance, the time my aunt (who is a well-educated high school principal, no less) super-glued her finger to her forehead...no lie. There are countless other stories I can't remember right now, but it's clear that I too have inherited that gene.

Yesterday I tore up my thumb a bit, basically ripping my cuticle off. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a terribly impressive injury and I doubt I'll be significantly handicapped by it, but what makes it so uniquely Mark is how it happened.

We had beautiful weather here yesterday and, for once, I actually had a completely free afternoon, so I decided it'd be a great opportunity to get out and try to rake up some leaves in my backyard. I know what you're thinking...

"Mark, did you seriously injure yourself raking leaves? I mean what's so dangerous about that...wow, you are clumsy!"

But oh no, I only wish it were something as great as that...maybe a horrible incident with the prongs of the rake or a rogue stick jumping out of the leaf pile into my skin. Nope.

While raking, I decided it was also a good opportunity to try to tear down part of the ugly chain-link fence in my backyard. The fence was half falling down anyway, and will eventually get replaced with a real fence, so I figured, why keep making myself look at the eyesore. I hear you now...

"Ahh, so while taking apart the fence you cut yourself on the metal? The wrench slipped or something? That's not so bad...we've all done something like that."

Oh hardly!

Trying to remove some of the fence posts, I was having great difficulty. Not only are these things buried with cement poured around them, but a couple of them were placed right next to a large old oak tree (hence the reason I had to rake) and it seems the roots have grown all around these posts. So, I decided it was time for me to go buy that pick axe I've been meaning to get and just chop up the roots some. Thus, I headed down to the Home Depot. This is where the injury occurred.

"Wow, Mark...you got injured at Home Depot? What did you do, cut yourself on a saw blade? have a light fixture come crashing out of the ceiling at you? have one of those cans of paint in the mixing machine come flying out at you at 60 miles per hour? I mean...that is kinda clumsy, hahaha!"

Oh silly blog readers...you've learned nothing, have you.

No, my injury happened in the parking lot...before I even got into the store. How? By running into the car next to me...while walking. Yep! I was looking at something on my car while walking into the store and turned around only to find that I was a split second away from running into the truck next to me. Well, not so much the truck, as the large stack of particle board he had hanging 3 or 4 feet out of the bed of his truck. My natural reaction was to throw my hands up to protect my chest from the impact, but, in so doing, I just managed to run my thumb along the rough edge of the board and still smacked into it. So graceful!!

I got in the store and stopped at the front desk to ask for a band-aid. When I first walked in, it wasn't bleeding yet, but by the time the lady found a band-aid behind the counter it was. Rather profusely at that. Apparently when you rip off a cuticle the blood starts flowing rather well. I asked her for a tissue or something to mop up the blood and she found one of those little anti-septic 'wet naps'. After a short minute or so, that thing was pretty much saturated and she ran off to go find some more. She brought me out 2 or 3 more which also quickly turned red. haha I suggested we just go ahead and throw the band-aid on there in an effort to stop the bleeding and call it a day. Of course, once she saw how much I was bleeding she asked "Gosh, what happened?" To which I had to sheepishly look at her and admit "I walked into the car next to me in the parking lot." Actually...in an effort to save face I started to explain about the particle board hanging out of the bed, etc, but decided that didn't really help my case much, so I just hung my head low and mopped up the blood.

People get hurt everyday...but only I would do it in such a unique way...ugh!!