Yesterday my parents tasked me with the seemingly innocuous job of dismantling and breaking down our rusted picnic table in the back yard.
My hand slipped while using the crowbar and slammed itself right into a jagged piece of rusted metal. The only thing that stopped its unforgiving path through my skin was the thumb bone. If I had used just a slightly different angle it could have quite possibly sliced through all the arteries in my wrist. Instead, blood just started squirting out of my thumb. Conversely, if I had been operating the crowbar with my feet, I would have definitely castrated myself. Or, even more scary, if I had been using my mouth to operate the tool, I most surely would have been decapitated. Back to the thumb. Since we live in a wonderful country that doesn't believe in keeping health care costs down, or forcing health insurance companies to offer reasonable plans, I didn't go to the emergency room, because the ER, stitches, cleanup and the necessary shots would have come out of pocket. So instead I have a pile of bandages keeping together a small but infinitely deep wound.
Tetanus is a concern with any rusty stab wound, which brings us to the picture above. My friend Jamaster Jay Miska advised me to look up pictures of people that have died from tetanus. The disease makes all your muscles constrict, creating an arched back and horrifying grin as you die. Like the "'80s guy" from Futurama that died of "Bonitis." I don't know the last time I had a tetanus shot, so I drove across town to the Illinois Department of Health for the $10 punch in the arm. The DoH is like the DMV only with friendlier employees. I got to sit and wait for a half an hour listening to toddlers named Destiny and Serenity scream and yell while their parent(s) sat idly like no one else is in the room. My only salvation were awesome posters such as this jem, "Some of your most valuable shots take place off the court. Vaccinations... they work!"
If the waiting room wasn't tourture enough, I now have a sore shoulder to go along with my useless thumb. Fuck you, picnic table.
2 comments:
I hope you don't get tetanus and die. I will miss you.
But I have been to the DoH! On Jefferson? I got a mumps shot there because I apparently didn't have enough when I was a baby. And I'm pretty sure I got to meet Destiny and her sister, too.
Good thing you're not a woman. For any shot you get there, as nice as the nurses are, they always seem to ask too loudly, "ARE YOU PREGNANT???"
what if you had been using your neck and shoulder such as a violinist?
ps. I am leaving a comment mainly because I like hearing the wheelchair speak; but also becuase this blog had me laughing out loud
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