Having a "Bill" day....

My second son, Bill, is known for being accident prone. If he ever calls anyone and says "Guess where I am?"... the person guessing can usually count on being correct if they say "At the hospital?"

Once, he called me up and told me that his boss had brought a watermelon to work for the crew members to have at their lunch. As soon as he said this, I asked him "How many stitches?"

"What? Mom, all I said is that the boss brought a watermelon to work for us to have at lunch!"
"And I know you!" How many stitches?"
"*Nine." he mumbled. (I truly don't remember how *many stitches this incident involved.)

Today was "oil day" at my job. With only three pallets, it wasn't too bad. I was taking down five gallon buckets of tractor fluid and stacking them on a dolly to move. The buckets were about my shoulder height... and I was wrestling them down and turning and putting them on the dolly. My finger got caught between a brace of the dolly and a five gallon bucket of tractor fluid.
When I got my finger free, it was bent.. I was sure it was broken. I tried moving it.. and had free range of motion... the  misshapen portion was due to the pressure of the bucket lid pressing in on my finger. In fifteen minutes, it was almost as good as new. I do still have a blue line bruise on my finger.

After completing the oil check in, I went to work on the shipping. With the auditor due for our annual inspection any day now, I have to be sure anything that CAN be shipped out, gets shipped. Today, it included some bins that were recently removed from the front counters. they are awkwardly shaped to ship, and I had six of them going out. So I was wrapping the shrink wrap around my pallet good and tight.
The "oil day" shipment includes cases and cases of antifreeze and window washer fluids in addition to the oil.
My strong husky co-worker guys take care of the lifting, toting and putting away of these cases of fluids. But the cases may sit on one of the pallets until the guys can get to them, as happened this morning.

I am wrapping my pallet nice and snug with my shrink wrap, carefully stepping over the area where my pallet of freight is inches from the pallet of antifreeze. Round and round and round I go! It makes me dizzy on a GOOD day. Today I was even dizzier, since the awkward shapes required me to go around and around even more times.

Just as I reached the corner where I needed to step between the two pallets... my roll of shrink wrap ended. It is bound to itself at the end of each roll. I already had one foot in the air to step as I hit the end of the roll... and it jerked me up short! I stumbled over the pallet corner I was trying to step over and went flailing into the stack of trash and empty boxes nearby. Pretty much flat on my face, but breaking my fall with my right arm.

I gained my "seat"... not even trying to stand up right away. No one had seen my fall! I assessed... wondering briefly if my arm was broken. It wasn't. I did get a nasty scrape on my arm, as well as a bruised knee. My hip/pelvis area is a bit out of whack... but I am not seriously hurt.

The twins laughed as I told them about my scraped arm when I got home... Sam saying I must be having a "Bill day". Dan suggested I might need to put on a helmet.

Bill called me a short while later, and we laughed about one of his worst moments. He had a broken ankle, which he got from a "runaway pickle wagon" while at a restaurant. He had tried to save a waitress who was so petite that her cart carrying "pickle bar" refills escaped her on the incline from the kitchen. Bill tried to stop the pickle wagon, but was instead run over by it, and suffered a broken ankle.

He had had to drive Christopher's car to the local college for some reason. Chris' car had a bad door- you had to raise the door up as you closed it. So Bill punched down the lock on the car door, balancing on one foot (the other being in a cast), put the car keys into his pocket... raised the door, and shut it. On his fingers.
This happened to have been some sort of holiday at the college... no one was around.
Bill is trapped... car keys in his pocket, balanced on one foot, fingers slammed firmly into the car door... and he cannot reach the keys in his pocket with his other hand.
He yelled for help for over half an hour before someone finally came by.
And to reach the keys, the fellow had to spoon right up to Bill's body and reach around him, and fish in his pocket. The sight that comes to mind is obscenely comical.

Poor Bill.
But we did laugh at it today. And now you can too.

Have a blessed day, and thanks for reading!