Friday, February 13, 2004

CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

So, I talked a bunch of trash about winter and it not being a real winter. Last weekend I was Champaign for an alumni event and staying at an awful hotel near the expressway. It had snowed with some frozen rain down there, and they do NOT have the snow removal facilities that we have. Thus, their expectations for snow removal are much, much, much lower than ours.

I knew all of this. Then I got out of my car with a nutritious meal of taco salad and nachos belle grande from Taco Hell. I had to park across the lot from my room because all of the spots in front of my room were disabled parking. I started to walk across the lot, and realized it was solid ice. I started to take baby steps to ensure that I would not have an accident (falling on the ice, not peeing my pants). I carried my dinner, my briefcase, and my mp3 player. I also had some pop from the Taco Hell. My hands were quite full.

And then it happened, it really happened . . . My left foot appeared to flare into active rebellion and made a break for it away from my body. This triggered the authoritarian reaction from the rest of my body, which was to immediately rush toward the foot to seize control of it and bring it back. This annoyed the left knee, which reacted by somehow bending in, then back, then snapping forward in about .002 seconds. The knee's unexpected support of the foot's rebellion caught the body off guard, and the body was launched forward, as the foot's final escape petered out at the length of the leg. Meanwhile, the pop seized the opportunity to be liberated and returned with an explosive splash to the earth from which it came. The taco salad and nachos had a longer journey, as they flew over my head, propelled by the centrifugal force of the handles on the bag into the ground. The resulting explosion looked suspiciously like Taco Hell after a nasty night of drinking ends in regret.

So. The foot's rebellion was quelled, pop was everywhere, my dinner had exploded into vomit-like pieces, my face and upper torso were covered with snow, and my knee was on fire. I limped into my room tired, hurt, angry, hungry, and thinking how funny dinner looked all over the parking lot. My knee is still stiff, but it seems like I'll be OK.

Stoopid winter.

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