I mortally wounded myself, just to make you guys happy. I present: How to Mortally Wound Yourself While Cleaning Off The Table. -or- How to Make Carrot Upside-down Cake.

Clean off the remnants of Easter dinner, and cover a largely un-touched carrot cake with plastic wrap, marveling at the skill with which it is applied and the flawless, wrinkleless way it is stretched over the glass sheet-cake pan. Carry this cake to the fridge, still gazing at the taut plastic wrap is quiet admiration, then try to open the fridge with one thumb. Fail miserably, allow the cake to tip, turn over in mid-air, strike your knee heavily on the way down and then crash to the floor in a thousand shards of glass and a pile of cakey carrot crumbs.

Since the cake will have crashed just inches from your sandaled foot, tiny glass shards will embed themselves in your foot like mini-shrapnel, making your foot burn until you can pick all of them out. Well, most of them at least. I may or may not die of gangrene. I already would have died of sadness if Aniraz hadn’t rescued what was left of the cake and decided that glass shards, the smaller ones anyone, are edible. He he. She says it’s part of her training for the circus. Every freak-show needs at least one glass-eater. Fortunately, my mother is a very kind and un-materialistic woman, so she did not try to murder me for destroying her favorite baking dish.

You know what’s ridiculous is that as I stood there with cake on the floor and glass in my feet, I laughed to myself and thought, Oh well, at least this will make for an interesting blog...

I have a really bizarre way of looking at things, I know. Once, a guy broadsided my car (with me in it) and then took off. As I was standing there, barefooted, with a busted car in the middle of an intersection, I laughed to myself and thought, Oh well, at least this will make an interesting story. Why was I barefooted? Well, that’s an interesting story too. Ok, I’ll elaborate.

I had just gotten out of the shower when I got a phone call from my mom, saying she needed to be picked up from a friend’s house. (This was back when he lived in the States) I was like sure mom, no prob. I got dressed, but couldn’t find my shoes. I figured what the heck, I drive barefooted in summer anyway. So I hopped into my car and headed off to pick my mom up. I stopped my car at a four-way intersection with stop-signs. (Incidentally, they don’t HAVE stop signs in Pakistan, so some of you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about.)

I was the first car to stop, then came a blue car, and then a police car. It was my turn to go through the intersection, so I pulled out, and just as I was half-way through, I heard a nasty crunch and felt the whole car jolt. The blue car had gunned it, shot out into the intersection while I was still in the middle, and hit my car so hard that it was slammed to the curb and the axel was broken. He hit the car on the driver’s side, my side, and caved the door in. Alhamdulillah, I was ok. (Always wear your seat-belt!)

I got out of the car from the passenger side (cuz his car was still crammed into my door!) and said, Umm...dude? The policeman pulled up and asked to see our licenses. I produced mine, and the cop looked it over. He asked for the other guy’s license, and the other guy panicked, started yelling at me and saying it was my fault. The cop actually laughed and said, oh no, it’s not her fault, it’s yours. I was here. Where’s your license?

The guy said it was in his car, so he got back in...and then sped off. The policeman took off after him, and that’s how I was left alone, barefoot, in the middle of an intersection with a busted car. I laughed to myself, pulled my car to the side of the road and walked home, barefooted and with a quickly swelling knee. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but when the car was hit, my knee was slammed into the steering column and badly bruised. When I got home I called my mom and she took a taxi.

I went to the police station later that afternoon, and told them what happened, and they radioed around and asked that the policeman who was at the intersection come to the station. He showed up about forty-five minutes later, and we had an interesting chat. It turned out that the guy in the blue car was 15 years old, and the car was stolen. He led the police on an interesting chase that ended when he crashed the car into something else.

The policeman told me that he saw the guy in the blue car staring at him nervously, and so the policeman stared steadily back at him. The guy was still staring at the policeman when he punched the gas and crashed into me. Boy, a guilty conscious needs no accuser! I don’t know what happened to the guy, we didn’t sue for damages (boy did we feel sorry for his parents!) so my car was busted for two months before I could get it fixed. That was the summer that I realized I liked to cycle. The End.

This is turning out to be a very long blog, but I must include an update on my favorite three-year old. (He’s the son of one of my students). He snuck up on me (in plain view, again) while I was teaching a lesson, this time wearing neon-green swimming goggles, water wings and flippers. After we oohed and aahed over him, he came back ten minutes later, this time with just the goggles, and proceeded to distribute wet-wipes to everyone in the room. Very gracious of him. I must remember to write a thank-you note.

Here’s a really great (but then, aren’t they all great?) ayah from the Qur’an. It’s from Surah 9, ayah 71.

‘And the believers, men and women, are protecting friends of one another, they enjoin the right and forbid the wrong, they establish worship and they pay the poor-due, and they obey Allah and His messenger. As for these, Allah will have mercy on them, Lo! Allah is Mighty and Wise.’

Labels: Mortal Wounds

posted by Abez @ 4/21/2003 08:17:00 PM