My husband hasn’t worn a wedding ring since the emergency room folks had to hacksaw it off. He was wrestling with some teenagers in a swimming pool. They broke his ring finger.
“You boys better settle down before someone gets hurt,” I remembered saying.
My husband hasn’t had the full use of his right knee since he hopped over a fence trying to help our neighbor catch his escaping bull. His ACL detached, causing his leg to dangle loosely—my husband’s ACL, not the bull’s.
“Sherwood, maybe you should try opening the gate first?” I remembered yelling.
My husband ‘s knuckle is scarred where he rammed a loose prong of field fence into his hand. He was loading a roll of field fence onto our truck at Tractor Supply. When he showed me his gushing wound and asked me if he thought he should get stitches I said, “It has been my experience that when you can see the stuff that’s supposed to be on the inside of your skin from the outside, you’re going to need stitches.”
“Babe, you should probably put your work gloves on,” I remembered warning.
A couple weeks ago, my husband slunk out of our bedroom into the foggy morning to play racquetball with several younger, sprier men.
I said, “Don’t go. But if you go, don’t fling yourself around like a twenty year old. If you do fling yourself around like a twenty year old, make sure you have someone to drive you to the emergency room, because I’m not doing it. I have things to do today.” He scoffed at my scorn.
Later that day my husband came home from racquetball and worked on the duck pen, fed the animals, and mowed the front pasture—with a potentially BROKEN wrist. He refused to tell me he had fallen while flinging himself around like a twenty year old.
I trimmed the hedge and watched him mowing the pasture. He had to keep his left arm bent across his chest. Every time he crossed in front of me he hit a bump, which caused him to double over the lawn mower steering wheel in agony; he continued to pretend his hand didn’t feel like it had been partially severed.
Back and forth, hit the bump and collapse. Back and forth, he rode by, like one of those rabbits you shoot at in a shooting gallery. Back and forth, hit the bump and collapse. It was like watching the Shoot the Sherwood Off the Lawnmower Arcade Game. At one point my vision blurred, and I thought if I had a gun I’d shoot him off that lawnmower.
Our son, Adam, drove my husband to the emergency room later that day. The bone was only “compressed” not broken. He was supposed to wear a wrist brace for three weeks. He didn’t.
My husband is an accident monger. A monger is a person promoting something undesirable (hatemonger, warmonger, bad judgment monger.) On the other hand, I am a cynic monger or a prophetess.
