Seriously, don’t. I’ll panic enough for all of us.
I was talking to a friend of mine this morning. I have come to love this woman dearly, perhaps to my own detriment. I am not kidding when I tell you that disaster follows her like pre-pubescent girls follow Nick Jonas. And we are talking real disaster here…..car crashes, people dropping to the ground in seizures, the occasional natural disaster. That doesn’t even include the shit that actually happens TO her. I’m a little bit afraid that if I hang out with her too much I’ll become one more fatality in her list of bizarre “You are not going to believe what I saw” stories.
After re-living her latest situation, I began to think of my own calamities and the way I am always able to react so…..poorly. I think it is very important to know your limitations. You’ve got to know where you excel and where you suck. For instance, I may be many things, but level headed in a crisis is NOT one of them. For a woman with so many thoughts and ideas flying through my head, give me any sort of crisis and I will become completely useless. All thought is replaced by a loud buzzing in my head accompanied by manic pacing and the occasional bursts of expletives. Three year old children have saved lives calmly dialing 911, tiny old women have lifted cars off children. Hell, they even train dogs to save lives……
All I can do when disaster strikes is stand in a corner in a puddle of my own piss. I’m fucking useless.
Case in point. Two years ago, Jimmy had a run in with a table saw. It was a Saturday afternoon. I was cooking, the kids were outside, and Jimmy was working on window boxes for my mother. Suddenly, I hear my then 7 year old let out a hair raising scream. As any good mother would do, I froze. Trey flings open the door. When he steps aside, Jimmy is standing on the porch with his hand wrapped in a blood-soaked towel. The man is a shade of grey with blood spattered across his face and trailing down the driveway….
(This is actually where it gets a little fuzzy for me. I have had to rely on the testimony of said husband and various witnesses to my downward spiral, to piece it all together).
I think this is when the buzzing starts, because I am now running wildly around the house in circles, shouting for the phone. I say shouting rather than looking, because I’m not actually touching or moving anything, just running in the same track over and over wildly yelling at it to appear. At one point I turn on an increasingly horrified Trey, to shriek “Where is the fucking phone????” I swear I don’t remember this.
Jimmy, the actual victim in this nightmare….. is a man with nerves of steel. I would trust him with my life and no, the feeling is not mutual for obvious reasons. He is able to automatically switch into survival mode. If he wishes not to bleed out in his own driveway, he’s going to need to calm me down. Are you seeing how backwards this is? He is calmly giving me step by step instructions on how to find the phone and call for help while he is holding the pieces of his finger together. Well the Universe had his back that day, for it’s at that moment that our phone rings and I am able to pull it from under the couch and shout to whomever is on the other line —- “Call a fucking ambulance!!!!!”
The caller, my mother, did call the fucking ambulance and managed to be at our house in 60 seconds to take over the situation. Really? Because I so had it under control.The ambulance arrived quickly and whisked Jimmy off to the ER. My parents made all the appropriate calls and offered us a ride to the hospital. I said yes. That would be great. I needed to be there for Jimmy. To support him.
Just let me dust off and we’ll be on our way. And hey, who the hell pissed on the floor?
You’ll be happy to know Jimmy still has his finger, Trey doesn’t seem too scarred by the verbal abuse, and I am still spending my days saving lives…..
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