A Tail Told by Lead

My mother told me something many years ago. As I recall, I was taking out the trash one evening, and slipped on a pair of shoes that were by the front door in order to do that task. They weren't a pair of mine, and I didn't realize that they were very slick-bottomed. As I stepped quickly out the front door and hit the top of the 5 concrete steps with those slick little flats, my feet literally flew out from under me. I hovered Coyote-like in the air for a moment before crashing onto the edge of the steps, landing smack on my tailbone. My mother, having heard some low groan escaping my paralyzed body, came to the door behind me and passed along the following advice: "Swearing helps."

Years later, while pet sitting one very cold winter day in Salt Lake, I hiked through 4+ feet of snow at a client's house to get to the pet turkey's pen in the back yard. After feeding the nasty creature, I closed the pen and turned around, slipping on the ice in the process.

As had happened previously, my feet flew up in the air, and I hung motionless for a moment before crashing to earth. This time I landed on the small of my back, across the edge of a wooden platform that was about 5 inches off the ground. After the 20 seconds it took to figure out I wasn't actually dead (and to wish I were), I recalled my mother's advice. I tried to swear, but realized that while I was still alive, I wasn't actually breathing (leaving in my mind the glorious possibility that I might actually still be allowed to die). So I laid on the ground, next to the turkey pen, watching Tom (ungrateful, stupid bird) try to peck my head. My upper body was laying on the wooden platform, my lower body in the ice that led up to the pen, and my feet were stuck under the unshoveled snow. The snow was so high all around me and the pen that I knew that no one would ever see my lifeless body. My only solace was that when my client returned, alongside my corpse they would find the starved carcass of that damned turkey that was trying to peck my eyes out.

Then the ability to breath returned, along with a wave of pain that brought to mind every foul word I'd ever heard in my life. Figuring that, at the very least, the sound of such language being vocalized so loudly would alert neighbors and/or authorities to my presence, I let out a string of language that would make my mother proud. While I can't swear (no pun intended) that it helped, I did survive the incident, and after about 15 minutes of laying on the ground and swearing, the ability to move was returned to me, and I actually crawled back to the house through the snow. Another 15 minutes spent swearing inside the house, and I was able to stand and walk to my car. I recovered fully after a few weeks, though I did have a truly remarkable 18 inch bruise diagonally across my back for about a month.

The moral of the story is: Always Listen To Your Mother.

Copyright © 1998, 2001 by OffLead Productions. Reprinted with permission of the author.