You know, I’m just that way.

I used to have a real fun coworker to whom I would talk about all my seemingly endless supply of publicly self-inflicted pain and misery. (Much as I do with you poor people now) She was also prone to such rank clumsiness or poor karma, and in comparing notes, we figured out that not only were we pretty pathetic, we also managed to do stupid stuff to ourselves in twos. Like the time I hit myself in the head with a hammer. Twice.

I was trying to relocate a pipe column in the basement of my mom’s house. I wanted to do this because my mother thought that she might want to build a room in the basement, and the column was just barely out of line with where it needed to be. It only needed to move over about two inches, and would then be in line with a future wall and be hidden under the future layer of drywall.

The column was not nailed into the joist girder above, or anchored into the concrete, so I got a floor jack and another length of pipe and very gingerly jacked up the girder just enough to take the pressure off the column. Not quite enough to move it by hand, though, so I had to resort to some extra help in the form of a hammer.

First I just grabbed one of the ball peen hammers off the work bench, but after the first incredible ear-ringingly loud tap, I thought better of using that. Hmmm. Dum-dee-dum-dee-doooooo—HEY! I know what! My dad had an ancient, heavy, rubber-faced tire hammer somewhere in all the mess of tools of ours—THAT’S what I needed—nice cushiony rubber. The hammer was from the job he had a long time ago at the gas station in Praco, and was used for breaking down truck tires. Not only did it have a rubber face (backed by a steel head), it had a wedge-shaped peen on the back for whacking down the tire bead at the rim.

I found it in the bottom of the toolbox and started waling on the top of the column for all I was worth. WHANG-BOUNCE WHANG-BOUNCE WHANG-BOUNCE Each time, the hammer would rebound at a slightly different angle, just as one would expect a hard rubber thing to react after contacting a cylindrical surface. WHANG-BOUNCE WHANG-BOUNCE WHANG-THUD It bounced just right that last blow, and the wedge-shaped peen caught me right square above my eyebrows.

You know the stars that twirl around Wile E. Coyote after he catches an anvil with his head? Those are real. I saw them. You ever wonder why Wile E. Coyote never decided to stay away from anvils? Because he was a genius. Said so on his business card. Just like on mine.

Figuring that the since the lightning had now struck that it surely couldn’t happen again, I blithely ignored Murphy’s Law Number 317 and once more picked up the tire hammer. WHANG-BOUNCE WHANG-BOUNCE WHANG-BOUNCE Yep, still all the SuperBall bounces. WHANG-BOUNCE WHANG-UHHHHGHGHHH Hmm, that hurt again. This time it was more off to the left and slightly higher upon my forehead. More stars. And little birdies. And the blinding pain that usually only bovines feel as they are poleaxed.

But I did get that stupid column moved over just right.

I relate this story only because my mother-in-law had to go back to the doctor at 2 o’clock today. Which means that once more, I have brought the Booger Brigade BACK to work with me.

They are at this very moment happily sprawled across the floor of my office, using up the colory stuff inside of $4-each Prismacolor markers at a prodigious rate and falling out of the drafting stool and wondering why Daddy is rubbing his forehead.

By the way, my mother decided not to finish the basement. She built another house and moved.
posted by Terry at 1:25:00 PM