Much study has been conducted into the realm of accidents. Primarily for the insurance industry. Ask any actuary and they will probably tell you that most accidents occur at home. It is safer to fly third-class dressed in a fish-skin suit with grizzly bears than it is to get your breakfast each morning. Perhaps it is because at home we are safe and our defences are down. I have come safely through more dangers than I care to recall from the jungles of Guatemala to the Coastal Range of British Columbia. But none of that made me wary of a rocking chair on a warm evening.
I was studying to obtain a Canadian Outdoor Recreation Education certificate. The course book is about three hundred pages and there are other booklets of a couple of hundred pages to learn as well. After a period of study at home, I was to attend classes on two different occasions for two different aspects of the training. It is interesting material and covers many different fields.
There is a section on orienteering and map and compass work, a section on firearms, ballistics and such, a section on the classification of fishes, birds and mammals, a section on ethics, ecology, sustainability, conservation, a section on survival, a section on camping, a section on emergency first aid in a wilderness setting, a big section on the laws of this land and its many facets and interpretations, be they Provincial, Municipal, Federal or Aboriginal. Next time you see a guy or gal in a blaze-orange vest resist your urge to stereotype them according to popular media. Chances are they might surprise the hell out of you with their rich store of very practical knowledge.
I read the books fully through and was on the second reading when my turn came up for the classroom sessions and the final exam. It was a Friday after work and I was cramming in the IKEA Poang chair in my living room. I remember reviewing that the wattle over the eye of the Blue Grouse is yellow while that of the Spruce Grouse is red. That is, only in the males of both species. I thanked the Great Spirit that he made them without adipose fins, just before falling very fast asleep.
My wife was also passed out on the couch after watching her stories in the humid eighty degree evening. Presently I came to. It was the vacancy of Alex Trebek's dulcet tones that snatched me unceremoniously from the embrace of Morpheus. Now I was hearing a trans-gender forensic pathologist cracking jokes with a purple-haired NSA type around a cadaver on a stainless-steel table. I knew I would likely hear the catch-phrases in their banter on a mass transit vehicle within a week and decided I could do myself a big favour by turning the TV off.
The remote was on the coffee table where my wife had put it. My book was in my lap and I am proud to say that my full mug of tea was still in my fist, albeit long cold but not spilled. My legs were crossed and if you had passed by a window you would have never guessed I was asleep. I closed the book after carefully marking the page containing the Grouse wattle data, after recognizing the potential it held as a trick question on the final exam.
I sat the mug gently down on a coaster on a doily and carefully moved this assembly away from the edge of the little coffee table. Refreshed from my nap, I planned to study the Gallinaceous birds again at breakfast before class. The only logical place to leave the tome was on the dining table immediately behind my chair.
After all, there was the matter of introduced birds having no feathers on their legs, while our native birds are equipped with feathers right down to their toe-nails. I felt confident to distinguish a puddle duck from a diving duck by their manner of flight and leg placement in relation to their bodies but it wouldn't hurt to memorize their silhouettes one more time.
I rose from my chair like the sun over a canyon rim, still clutching the book. I turned to the table behind my chair and noticed that my body was at a 60 degree angle to the floor. Realizing instantly that I had no justification for such a saucy cant, I attempted to straighten up di-di mao. By then I was 80 degrees off the perpendicular and my head was on a collision course with a hard wood arrow-backed dining chair.
As I hurtled toward the aforementioned meeting of wood and bone, I took the opportunity afforded by the wonderful slowing of time usually present in such circumstances, of looking at my legs. Could they be the culprits? Aha! My right foot was turned over 65 degrees and I had been standing on my ankle-bone.
Because I had felt no pain nor pins and needles prior to being physically out of my normal plane of locomotion, I had no indication of any problem whatsoever. My cross-legged sleeping posture had effectively cut off the circulation and temporarily deadened all the nerves in that leg.
With great relief at having solved a mystery, I grabbed the chair with both hands as it rose to meet my skull and pulled it down as we both fell backwards. I recollected that the only other time in my life that I had experienced complete lack of feeling in a limb was after my first kava-kava ceremony of which I will tell the tale in another post. As I processed these memories and revelations, I simultaneously realized that I could not afford to let the chair I gripped break my precious eyeglasses, so I thrust the offending furniture away.
Twisting like an ocelot, I latched onto the Poang chair just shy of hitting the floor which caused the laminated steam-bent-birch to creak in kinetic anguish. At the apex of its weight loading, the Poang released its potential energy like an English longbow at the Battle of Agincourt. This launched me Parthian style back into the path of the waiting coffee table and my mug of tepid tea.
As I flew now backwards, my mind searched for yet another reference. All I could come up with was Jerry Lewis in the Disorderly Orderly or perhaps Geisha Boy. I spun around like the rear wheel of a motorcycle on a dirt-track and landed with both hands on top of the coffee table either side of my tea and my nose four inches from my wife's sweet face, oblivious to the proceedings from the couch. Just as the spent Poang came to rest on my back with a spine-tingling clack, she opened one sleepy eye.
“Tchh, Michael, do not try to kees me. It ees bery hot. My neck eeso esticky. Why ees all the foornitoor down?'”
I gave a her a brief explanation and when the feeling finally returned to my leg, I began a process of thawing everything I could find in our freezer on my right foot which had taken on the appearance of an eggplant. I did this on the front steps outside, bringing the study book and my tobacco pouch. After an hour, my wife came out to water her flowers and beans.
She expressed her concern and condolences, offering to refresh my stock of frozen foodstuffs. Being practical and realizing that in my weakened condition I might be more suggestible than usual, she came near with the hose and drizzled water on some potted plants. I rolled another smoke as I watched her.
“Papi, can you not lessen your esmoking? You are conshooming tobacco like a catairpeelar. Tchh.”
“No te precupes, mi amor. Alles ist gut. It's a Cherokee thing.”
fin