Skiing on Chopsticks

So Curmudgeon asks, “Was she skiing?” Not bloody likely. I regard ski poles the same way I regard crutches or chopsticks – unmanageable, and more likely to harm me than playing with matches while soaked in gasoline.

I hurt myself at work with a good ol’ slip-and-fall. I spend the majority of time at work in a cattle barn. While it has a roof, the design provides for a ventilation opening at the very peak, which is partially covered but does allow for drifting snow or rain to come through. There is a catwalk above the pens in the barn, which lets me to walk above the animals to check on their comfort without having to walk among them. [As an aside, I don’t much mind walking among dairy cows, although you need to watch your back since a cow in heat could try to jump you. Beef steer and heifers aren’t too bad, since their flight zone is fairly large and they’ll turn themselves inside out to try and stay away from you. Bulls are untrustworthy, but for the most part would rather walk away than mess with you; there are major exceptions to this rule. Beef cows are evil and would sooner crush you against whatever hard fence/floor/rock is available than try a live-and-let-live approach to life.] The sides of the barn are completely open from the half-way point on up, covered by netting to prevent birds and other animals from accessing the barn. During inclement weather tarps can be raised to block out cold/wind/rain.

The catwalk over the barn is covered in dust because of the wood-chip bedding provided in the pens. When a little moisture makes it through the top of the barn, this dust can become slick. It would seem I let my guard down last week, because while going down a short set of stairs on the catwalk my right heel took off on the bottom-most step without my permission, sending my right leg flying out in front of me and causing my right side to impact fairly firmly on the stairs themselves. I think my right foot encountered a bale of hay situated a few feet beyond the end of the stairs; I do know that the foot was turned in and jammed fairly sternly against something, in spite of the slip-resistant, steel toe, protective ankle boots I wear. Gravity is a bitch.

The first on the scene to my little disaster was a big bear of a guy who works in the barn with me. He rescued my hard hat, which was perhaps three millimeters from toppling off the catwalk onto some poor heifer in the pen below me. Big Bear then attempted to set me back on my feet, but the ankle wasn’t having anything to do with that proposed course of action. Bear did manage to get me seated on the very stairs that betrayed me, and went for help from the establishment’s infirmary. By the time everybody had gathered to see my shame, the ankle had dropped from I’m-gonna-barf pain levels to I-might-hafta-barf levels. I was half-carried back to my desk, where I arranged for someone to pick me up.

In all, not a particularly interesting story, and I subject my readers to this only to defend myself against charges of having actually strapped on skis and permitted gravity to take over while on the top of a very large hill. As stated previously, gravity is a bitch, and there are far easier ways to kill oneself. Like skidding off the bottom stair in slip-resistant boots.