I had a bad day last Wednesday. Calling in sick to work makes me uncomfortable - I always get the feeling that my boss thinks I'm lying. Wednesday I had a good reason but lied anyway, because the truth was just too humiliating, simply saying I had sustained a head injury, and I hoped I would feel up to coming in the next day.
By then, I reasoned, I could think up a believable excuse to explain the bandage on the top of my head.
The accident occurred mainly because I had given in to my wife's wishes to adopt a cute little kitten.
On Wednesday morning, I was taking my shower after breakfast when I heard my wife call to me from the kitchen.... "The garbage disposal is dead again. Please come reset it."
I suggested she reset it herself. "But I'm scared!" she persisted. "What if it starts and sucks me in?" There was a meaningful pause and then, "C'mon, it'll only take you a second."
So out I came, dripping wet and buck naked, hoping that my silent outraged nudity would make a statement about how I perceived her behaviour as extremely cowardly.
Sighing loudly, I squatted down and stuck my head under the sink to find the button. It is the last action I remember performing.
It struck without warning, and without any respect to my circumstances.
No, it wasn't the hexed disposal, drawing me into its gnashing metal teeth. It was our new kitty, who discovered the fascinating dangling objects she spied hanging between my legs.
She had been poised around the corner and stalked me as I reached under the sink. Then, at the precise moment when I was most at my vulnerable, she leapt at the toys I unwittingly offered and snagged them with her needle-like claws.
I lost all rational thought to control orderly bodily movements, blindly rising at a violent rate of speed, with the full weight of a kitten hanging from my masculine region.
Wild animals are sometimes faced with a "fight or flight" syndrome.
Men, in this predicament, choose only the "flight" option. I know this from experience.
I was fleeing straight up into the air when the sink and cabinet bluntly and forcefully impeded my ascent. The impact knocked me out cold.
When I awoke, my wife and the paramedics stood over me. Now there are not many things in this life worse than finding oneself lying on the kitchen floor buck naked in front of a group of paramedics.
Even worse, having been fully briefed by my wife, the paramedics were all snorting loudly as they tried to conduct their work, all the while trying to suppress their hysterical laughter.... and not succeeding.
Somehow I lived through it all.
Today I finally made it back in to the office, where colleagues tried to coax an explanation out of me about my head injury. I kept silent, claiming it was too painful to talk about, which it was.