Put me on the ludicrously injured list. No I didn’t slip on a banana peel or walk into a glass door, or get cool whip in my eyes from a pie in the face. The source of my injury is even more ridiculous than a badly executed pratfall, worse than poorly planned farce. I fell off my bed due to an excess of pillows.
I’ve always been fairly graceful, an ironic result of busting my ass so frequently during my years as a competitive ice skater. I’ve fallen off of rocks, paths, cars, horses, sleds, skis, even the occasional man during a particularity athletic bit of loving, but this one was new.
I fell off my bed. Well, I fell getting into bed. Joseph made me a bed that is especially high, per my request, so that we can see out the window, across a lovely field and straight to the ocean. The breezes waft over us at night and the waves are our lullaby. So, to get into bed, I have to stand on my toes and kind of get one butt cheek up over the edge and then shift my weight up over the top as I draw my legs parallel and collapse safely onto our nocturnal aerie.
But I didn’t count on that extra pillow when I was incoming. The mount started out all right. I gained cheek purchase, swung my legs up, my weight started to counter onto the mattress, but then suddenly I was blocked from continuing the inertia, my momentum was arrested, full stop. Thwarted, for a split second I teetered on the perilous edge of balance, then my weight started to counter back from whence it came, back out over open air, and…
And I know I’m in for it. Yep, I’m going down. Well doesn’t this feel familiar.
But I’m used to falling, I’ll just hit the carpet and roll, I got this.
Oops, forgot about the bedside table, which is about a foot and half below the mattress. The first thing that hits is one of my ribs on my back left side. It knocks the breath out of me and pain fires off from every neuron in my sensory receptors—all of them, it seems every part of my nervous system wants in on the hilarity.
In turn, the bedside table smashes against the wall with a reverberating crash, I land in a sitting position on the floor between the wall and the bed. I can’t breathe, which might be good because breathing hurts like a mofo, but the mishap is so ridiculous that I am laughing, but I’m not really laughing because there is no air with which to produce a laughing noise.
It sounds a bit like this, “Hee, hee, ahhhrg! Hee, ahhhgh, gasp, gasp, Ow! (shallow, broken attempts to obtain air,) hee, hee, ow, son of a….ha…ow…bitch!”
My husband leans over, “Are you all right?”
Since I don’t have the life force to answer him succinctly, I grunt out an interrupted, “Fi-ine.” But the laughter refuses to be ignored or restrained, even by the pain, my absurdity and that of the situation is making my objective self howl with laughter and pain, negating and stunting each other.
“Why are you crying?”
I huff out in the small puffs of air that I can manage, “Bro-ken,” I manage. “Not…crying…laughing…ow…ow….ow!”
“What happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine…” I lie again. “…fell…., too…many pillows.
At which point the unrivalled love of my life makes a mistake. A big mistake. “Ha!” he says, “Pillow karma!”
Now I’m out of breath, laughing, crying, swearing, and filled with a red hot need for revenge all at the same time.
It hurts.
Pillow Karma my ass. This from man who sleeps with a minimum of 4 pillows. This from a man who somehow manages to get the pillow cases and the fitted sheet off the bed pretty much every night, in his sleep.
So even in those first few seconds as I sit shallowly sucking in miniscule puffs of air that stab and twist, giggling painful, twisted noises, I begin to plot his demise.
I cannot, of course, reveal the evil machinations of my plan in this blog. My attorneys have advised against it, as it will offer too much proof of intent to the prosecution. Suffice to say that there are worse ways to wake up than when your wife yanks a pillow she favors out from under your head. There are sticky, smelly things that can be added to down pillows that resist detection and deny one a restful night’s sleep. Those feather shafts can be sharp, especially when that’s all that’s in them.
And of course, he can cuddle his pillows instead of his wife until the cracks in my ribs heal enough for me to take a deep breath and really unleash.
It’s been two days, and I’m doing much better, as long as I don’t have to breathe deeply, lift my left arm, blow my nose, or god help me….sneeze.
Please, I’m begging, no sneezing!
Of course, we are moving in two days, so I am still packing and cleaning.
And because I’m on the comically injured list, I’ve got the bed to myself.
Hubby can just sleep on the sofa with the throw pillows and the dog.
Love him so much.
Into each marriage some dissent must come.
And off of each bed, some idiot must fall.
You just have to laugh at it.
No matter how painful a giggle is.
And absolutely, positively no guffawing.
Karma comes in many colors, shapes and firmness levels.
You just go lay down and take a nap honey.
I’ll…uh, I mean, you’ll feel much better.
Where did I put the honey?
Shari, October 29th, 2017