A few years ago, they had this commercial for some product that I can't remember, which is never a good sign of a memorable ad if the potential customers can never remember what the original ad was. This ad showed a young-ish suit-and-tie guy walking down a sidewalk when he happens upon some kids playing on a slip and slide on their front lawn. For the uninitiated, a Slip N Slide is a long slick track that you hook a hose up to. The kids then take turns running, diving and sliding on the Slip and Slide. The water makes you fly really fast. In the commercial, the suit-and-tie guy pauses, then takes off his jacket, throws down his briefcase, runs and slides on the Slip and Slide with the kids! It looks really fun, but the screen disclaimer is a real downer, "Warning. Do not attempt. Serious injury may result."
This is true. Serious injury can and often does result from men trying to feel young by doing activities they really shouldn't be doing. We often forget we're mortal. Kids don't have that fear, which is they why do they a lot of stupid things. Kids also don't break as easily as adults. This is where men get into trouble.
My neighbor down the street found this out first hand when trying out a Slip and Slide he had set up for his 4-year-old son (at the time). My neighbor's back yard is sloped down towards this house and he set up the Slip N Slide that way on the slope. He decided that he was going to try the Slip N Slide himself. He went to the top of this yard, took a running start, slid on the Slip N Slide, shot past the end of it, flew over jagged rocks and hit the backside of his house. While he was cut, bleeding and injured, his wife thought this was funny as hell and laughed and laughed.
This brings me to another point. Wives not only think we're stupid, which we can be sometimes, they also love to laugh at our pain.
When my wife and I were dating, my roommates and I had a garage sale in our little townhouse garage. I had placed a cardboard garage sale sign by the entrance of our resident complex. When the sale was over, I drove Laura over to the entrance, got out of the car and went over to get the sign, which was taped underneath a Stop sign. I picked up the sign and walked forward, right into the side of the Stop sign.
All Laura could hear was a "wongongongong!". She looked up to see me holding my head and staggering around. She didn't stop to see if I was okay. She was too busy laughing her ass off at me. She laughed and laughed and laughed some more. Every time she looked at me and the large welt on my face, she laughed again.
She said, "That was the funniest thing I've ever seen!" while wiping away tears of happiness.
Another time, it was winter and we were walking to my car to return some wedding gifts that we had duplicates of. I had three boxes in my arms when I took a step off the curb and promptly slid and fell on my ass. I gasped in pain. Then I gasped some more as I suddenly couldn’t take a breath.
I gasped, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”
Laura was concerned, for a minute. When I finally caught my breath and was clearly okay save for a bruise to my ribs, she started laughing and laughing. Nevermind that I might have cracked a rib or hit my head on the pavement, it was just funny to her that I fell down like Charlie Chaplin.
It wasn’t the last time I hurt myself in a stupid way. There was the time I cut my middle finger while trimming my hedges. Normally, one would probably uses goggles and gloves when trimming his hedges with an electric hedge trimmer, but not me. It didn’t occur to me that something bad might happen so I thought nothing of not using gloves.
I was in the two-foot gap between my hedges and my neighbor’s fence trimming the overgrown back part of the hedges. I was waving the hedge trimmer in a sweeping motion downward to get the higher branches cut on the hedges. I swept down with my right hand and pulled the branches away with my left. I was at it for a while when I nicked the extension cord and almost cut through it. I thought to myself to be careful not to cut the cord. Not a minute later, I swept down with my right hand while pulling branches with my left hand when “BUZZT!”, a loud sound erupted from the hedge trimmer. I dropped the still running hedge trimmer and looked down at my hand. I had cut my index finger. I had cut it deep and blood started to gush out of it. I grabbed my hand and ran towards the house.
I ran inside and said frantically, “Take me to the hospital!”
Laura kind of looked at me skeptically. I knew she was thinking that I was trying to fool her.
“I’M NOT KIDDING!” I yelled.
She jumped up and took me to the hospital. Laura would laugh later because she couldn’t picture how I managed to cut my finger. She still can’t. Laura would look over at me holding my hand it in the air with my massive splint on the middle finger and start chuckling. Or she’d say something like, “Hey, stop flipping me off!”
Not that it was the first time I’ve hurt myself.
In college I managed to fracture my left index finger while playing a dangerous game of basketball. We were just starting a game when I had the ball passed to me. It wasn’t a hard throw, but I had looked away at the last second to see who was open when I felt a huge pain surge up my arm. In the process of catching the ball, I had moved my hand slightly and the ball collided with my finger. I managed to catch the ball and I called timeout for an injury. The next day, I couldn’t even bend the finger without pain shooting up my hand. A visit to the doctor later and I was fitted with a splint for a fractured finger.
Not that my friends were sympathetic. If I had my hand on the table during dinner at the dorm lunchroom, there were all sorts of jokes like, “Hey, Bob where is the salt?” I’d look down to see my finger pointing in the direction of the salt. “Oh there it is! Thanks!” The joke was always where is the pop, plate, floor, someone else and them saying, “Oh there it/he is!” Ha Ha. So funny.
Whether we’re trying to have fun or just trying to fix something around the house, men are bound to get hurt.
At my last job, we had a really nice grass courtyard right next to our office. While some of our employees used their break time to smoke a cigarette, our group used it to have recess. We would play touch football, soccer and rugby for an hour everyday. It was fun, but not without its dangers.
One guy started limping and re-aggravated his hamstring injury from high school. He was encouraged by his wife to stop playing football with us to give his leg a chance to heal. He kept playing with us, but his leg got worse. His wife demanded that he stop playing football. He again kept playing with us. Finally, his leg was so bad that he had to see a doctor, who told him that his hamstring had torn and it required surgery. After the surgery and he recovered, he continued to play against his wife’s wishes.
The stupidity didn’t stop there.
Another co-worker, Jim, ended up sidelined for over a week after a spirited game of touch football caused a hernia to flare up, which then required surgery, which laid him up from football and work for a week. Because it was on company time, he got off a week of work and we almost got banned from using the courtyard.
Yet another co-worker, Chris almost got impaled during a spirited football game. Let me explain. He was running a pass route when he blindly, that is he wasn’t looking forward, encountered one the small trees in the courtyard. This wasn’t really new for Chris as he had collided with several trees in the courtyard during some of the games. This time, he ran headlong into one of the support poles for the small tree, which instantly snapped in half, with the remaining half in the ground now a lower sharp point. Chris managed to stop himself with a light skin abrasion. That would have been good. I think we would have gotten banned for good had that happened.
Even I was almost banned by Laura from recess after completely ripping two pairs of jeans. Each time, all I was doing was throwing a football. Each time, I threw the ball and I heard a “RRIIIIPPPP!!” I looked down and noticed that I was completely hanging out in the crotch area because the fabric had ripped all through the upper leg area. I finished work with a nice breeze. Two week later with a different pair of jeans, the same thing happened again. I made the mistake of telling Laura that a co-worker had been forbade by his wife to play, but he played anyway. She said that she should do the same thing to me. I then shut my mouth.
We even had a newer employee start playing with us. He had no hands. Where hands should be were nubs. How did he lose his hands? Making a pipe bomb of course! The pipe bomb did not go off like it should have so he walked over to it and picked it up when... well... I think you can see where this is going.
Now that I think about it. It's probably justified that she sometimes treats me like an idiot. After all, we tend to do idiotic things on occasion. As she says, "I never know with you..."
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