Can a writer collect workman’s comp?
The Devil Made Me Do It
I can’t believe it! I’m sitting here with broken ribs after an Alpha Male encounter with my little bitty puppy. Okay, at 85+ pounds and 17 months he’s not exactly little bitty anymore. If the pain and humiliation weren’t enough, I had to sit through a lecture from my doctor on how I needed to train my dog. Sailor, the yellow labrador is a great dog, an enthusiastic dog, and most of all a happy dog. He even got a trophy at DOG OBEDIENCE SCHOOL! (Never mind what the trophy was for, that’s another story.)
He sits, he stays, he shakes, he heels… all of that stuff. He’s just a little resistant to change. Once a pattern has been established, he likes to keep it that way. I’m amazed that within a couple of minutes of straight up 8:00 PM every night, he lets us know that it is time for a Greenie. I’ve never seen it before, but somehow this dog even adjusts his internal clock for daylight savings time. When the time changes come, it’s not 7:00 or not 9:00 but still straight up 8:00 by the clock! Simply amazing. I’m sure that this yellow ball of fur actually knows how to tell time.
Ah, but I digress. The ribs.
My wife loves to read in the early, early morning (sometimes it’s even MY stuff she likes to read…) and Sailor the yellow labrador has become her reading partner. He sits next to her in my seat on the sofa as she reads. In the early, early morning, this is not a problem for me because I am either pounding on my keyboard (creating new stuff for her to read) or sleeping like a normal person at an early, early hour of the morning.
Somehow, Sailor the yellow labrador refuses look at the clock at reading time. Therefore, he refuses to understand that my seat on the sofa is only his at certain times of the day! I think that Sailor the yellow labrador is somehow genetically connected to either the grasshopper or the springbok (that little African antelope that boing-boings all over the place) because of the distances he can jump from a standing position.
He digresses, again, one thinks as one reads these words. Nope, the jumping is part of the story!
Sometimes, after straight up 8:00 PM, and the Greenie has been distributed, Mr. Author and his wife (Mrs. Author) like to relax on said sofa… together. Perhaps we read, or plug in a DVD, or watch one of the televised autopsy shows. We look at Sailor the yellow labrador and say to him. “This is our time, this is not reading time. Look at the clock.”
At which point, he immediately begins a completely obnoxious behavior known as Yarking. This obscene cross between a Yip! and a Bark! is one of the most grating, horrible, torturous sounds ever foisted upon mankind by any living creature (second only to the screeching violins from the shower scene in Psycho). Yarking is so bad that listening to it even pisses off the dog, at which point he transmorphs into the terrifying grasshopper-springbok boinging creature.
Without warning, this hideous mutant is airborne, landing seconds later on the Author’s nether parts, after which, the room fills with the cacophony of multiple, overlapping shouts of the phrase NO! BAD DOG!
On most normal evenings, this cycle only needs to be repeated twenty or thirty times before Sailor the yellow lab decides that he is tired and elects to lay down and sleep. Last Wednesday there were no repeat cycles…
The male human rib is not huge. Maybe 3/4 of an inch in width and 3/8 of an inch in thickness is a good sized riblet. Human ribs are not structurally engineered to support the entire weight of an 85+ pound yellow labrador retreiver focused in the circumference of a single paw. I repeat, human ribs are not structurally engineered to support the entire weight of an 85+ pound yellow labrador retreiver focused in the circumference of a single paw.
The pain pills are good, but the brace is uncomfortable.
‘Be careful,’ said the doctor. ‘There are certain things you cannot do without risking a punctured lung.’
‘What are the things that I cannot do?’ I asked.
‘Any of the things that you would like to do.’
Poor Mr. Author… Poor Mrs. Author…
Ironically, the incident of Sailor the springbok/grasshopper mutated yellow labrador is not the first time Mr. Author has ended up with broken bones as the result of a cute, fuzzy, lovable family dog.
Many years (and dogs) ago, Mr. Author suffered a compound (e.g. bloody enough for autopsy TV) fracture of the left ankle when a black labrador, Irish setter mix ran between his legs full speed while still on leash.
Just a few years ago, a brand new, nine week old white lab female, got in between Mr. Authors feet at the top of the stairs. Mr. Author was in a cast for eight weeks over that one, and in the middle of crisscrossing the nation in economy class… (but that is yet another story.)
Sailor the yellow labrador is not so great at telling time after all. He may know when it is Greenie time, but he has no comprehension of when the far end of the sofa belongs to me!
ttfn, rlc
