No, That's NOT A Big Bear Paw

It's been quite a while since I shared one of my debilitating injuries with you! So you're in for a treat today. Not quite as good a treat as cake and ice cream, or the pulled pork leftovers Farmer H brought home yesterday, or even as good as the dry cat kibble that the dogs get when I return from town. But still, a TREAT! It's not every day you get to read about what a klutz Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is when left to her own devices.

This time, my device was an ink pen. Yep. Not even one of those deadly quill pens, made from a hollow turkey feather. Or its second cousin, the ink pen with a metal nib. Nope. We're talkin' about a common ballpoint. Not even one in a fancy wooden case, as may be given to a teaching wife at Christmas time, with the suggestion, "You can take it to school, and set it on your desk." Yeah, right! If I want it STOLEN withing the first three class periods.

No, none of those implements of writing. We're talkin' about a blue-ink brown-colored ballpoint pen, stolen unthinkingly picked up from the cup on the counter outside the glass window of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's credit union.

I carry that pen in the side pocket of my 20 30-year-old purse, to pop in my shirt pocket during sorties to The Devil's Playground. To cross off items from my list, making sure to purchase them all, so that when I get home, Farmer H can tell me something that he really wanted. That wasn't on my list.

Anyhoo...on Wednesday, I was out and about, buying assorted last-minute items that may have been foodstuffs, drinkstuffs, or scratcherstuffs. The days all run together for me now. Anyhoo...I was sitting in T-Hoe's driver's seat, and reached over to my purse on the shotgun seat to to pull something out of that side pocket. It may have been a shopping list, or a list of previous ticket winners, both of which are on index cards stuffed in the side of my purse. Or it could have been a dollar bill for my 44 oz Diet Coke. In any case, the pen wasn't wedged upright as I normally keep it. That pen flipped out. Having lightning-quick reflexes (I'm a ninja!), I juggled that pen before it could fall down in the cracks of the seats, or tumble into the second row. As I closed my hand around it, the top end of the pen, which was on the bottom at the time, jammed into T-Hoe's console, and the bottom end of the pen, which was on the top at the time, jammed into the fleshy part of the heel of my hand.

It hurt like a sonofagun! Reminded me of the time I was in junior high, rounding a corner, my books tucked into my elbow, pencil grasped in my hand, and a young hooligan rounded that same corner from the other direction, hitting my books and forearm, jamming that recently-sharpened pencil into my belly. A niftier puncture could not have been made by a healthcare professional giving me the first of a series of rabies shots. I may still carry the gray mark of the graphite to this day.

Anyhoo...my hand had that indentation that looked like blood might start spurting. But it didn't. I think the force of the impact made the blood vessels seal themselves off. There WAS a blue dot there, though. I meant to get a picture for you that night, but you might have cried shenanigans and accused me of merely drawing on my own hand with a blue ink pen. So I took the picture a day later.

Yes, I'm already on the mend. And if you plan to read my lifeline...I may not want to hear the conclusion.