WARNING: This article contains crud humor. If you have not read The Atlantic online article, “The Coddling of the American Mind”, or if you do not enjoy crud humor, please leave now. You have been warned!

On Monday afternoon I tripped coming up the stairs to the front deck resulting in a full header onto the deck. I have a hard lump on my left eyebrow, a colorful left eyelid and surrounding tissue, and, to make matters worse, both wrists are seriously sprained.

When my son came home from work early and saw my predicament, he went back out to find two wrist braces and some ACE bandages. At Rite Aid he found a stack of ACE (the best) wrist braces, unfortunately all for right hands, no lefts in the store. I’m sure they were very apologetic, but why all rights? I can’t get it through my mind why they wouldn’t stock a few lefts. It just doesn’t make a bit of sense. He ended up going to Walmart where he found an ambidextrous brace. Its okay but a little too small, okay, a whole lot too small. It claims to be Large/X-Large. It feels more like a Medium. (I think of small handed workers in some foreign factory unable to imagine how Americans can have such large/x-large hands, so they make the braces a scosh too small to fit their hands. Warning: My mind comes up with the damnedest shit.) Yesterday on his way to work he went to Bartells and found a leftie, which does the trick.

I suppose the worst of it is that my typing speed has dropped to at least under 5 wpm; single fingers (mostly the FUs on each hand) though sometimes I catch myself using the others, but I can’t do that consciously, they just have to do it on their own, making a plethora (didn't think I'd use it, did you?) of typos as they go along. Sheesh!

In this/last month’s Smithsonian magazine there is an article by A. E. Hoetchner about his close friend Ernest Hemingway (I recommend it if you’re a fan of Hemingway. Even if you’re not, I recommend it anyway. Well written stuff is good to read, even if you don’t particularly like the subject.)

Anyways, the article eventually gets down to Hemingway’s WW I novel A Farewell to Arms. A dark corner of my mind kicks in, interrupting the program. It brings up a picture of a hospital ward in some armed conflict (not unlike the hospital where Rock Hudson found himself in the movie of the same name). The ward is filled with soldiers who have lost their arms.

Okay! Okay! I told my mind is dangerous. Its not funny, honest its not meant to be funny, but your (and mine) mind can’t stop your lips from going into, at the minimum, an uproaring giggle. If someone asks, just say they wouldn’t understand. Full guffaws are excused in advance.