Mind Your Toes

The Hazards of Everyday

Eight weeks ago, while walking the dogs, I rolled my ankle on the gentle, non-threatening slope at the edge of my country road. I slow-motion folded to the ground in agony, like a dying ballerina, the husband asking What are you doing? I’m still limping.

Last night, while talking on the phone and feeding the dogs, I smashed my head on the Wurlitzer. The mechanics are difficult to explain; it was like complicated stage choreography, but I nailed it. Now I have a divot and a bump on my forehead. And a headache. And a bum ankle.

My aunt tripped in her dining room, catching her eye on the sharp corner of the now-discarded dining table. A few surgeries and some therapy later, she’s confident that she can keep the eye, but not the sight.

A friend of a friend was leaning on her shopping cart in a long line at the grocery and reached to catch it as it started to topple. She shattered her wrist and her career as a violinist.

My cousin’s dogs chased a squirrel while at the end of the leash and took her ankle with them. It broke in several places and she now wears a metal plate on the inside of her body.

My husband stuck his head in a ceiling fan. He was cleaning. Yes, it was on. There were stars, there was blood.

My father-in-law, a most cautious man, had his big toe pinned to the floor by the spear of a greek warrior. The bronze statue fell from its perch and stabbed him while he watched home movies in the dark.

An old boyfriend almost lost a toe to the spinning fan that fell off the television as he stood pontificating. It (the toe) hung by a fleshy thread while I rushed him to the ER. The toe was repaired; my recovery continues.

The oven that exploded and singed my sister’s eyebrows. The trip down the stairs that landed in the emergency room. The black walnut that rolled an ankle and bought another metal plate.

Danger is lurking in the most innocent places. We worry about fires and football fields, we all think we’re more likely to die on the road or in a plane, but no sir.

“The reality is that you are more likely to die sorting out the Christmas lights by taking them out of the loft …”

This from Dr. Cliff Mann, the former president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine in the UK (of course, where else are things Royal).

The Christmas lights, people! The loft! We are fragile — we break.

Perhaps we need to reconsider the helmet. Perhaps there should be a Home Helmet, fashionably designed to fit our moods and the seasons. And steel-toe slippers for those midnight trips to the kitchen. Goggles? Full-body armor?

Whatever it takes.

Sit down, slow down, quiet down, beware! Mind your toes. And the lights.