Monday, December 04, 2006

That’s gonna leave a mark

There’s no better way to look confident and sexy and unrepentantly macho in front of your boyfriend than to slip on the ice and collapse at his feet. And then whimper in pain.

We were walking along a little alley-driveway yesterday where car tires had created deep ruts and sharp peaks in the snow, all of which had hardened into a rock-hard grooves of ice as cold and black as Dick Cheney’s heart.

As careful as we were, I managed to put my foot on the slipperiest part of the steepest groove and suddenly found myself tumbling to the ground with all the grace and masculinity of a drunken showgirl. As I landed, the side of my right shin slammed into one of those rock-hard ice grooves. And then the I’m-in-pain noises came out of my mouth.

As I lay there watching my leg-model dreams skate away to the theme from Ice Castles, I suddenly realized this was the first time the boyfriend and I had ever seen each other in any context other than happiness and ice cream. Which is kind of redundant. Fortunately, I was able to get up and limp inside and preserve some shred of my fading dignity. And save our relationship. And the pain that felt like it could easily be a break or a sprain or at the very least a loss of blood turned out to be just a really bad owie.

And though it hasn’t bruised yet, the thing hurts worse than a Republican Senator in December. There’s no way I’m escaping this little incident without a visual souvenir, so I hope the bruise ends up being one of those horrifying greenish-black things that will give me tons of street cred in the gym.

And then I hope it clears up by the end of January. I want to be perfectly healthy when I cruise the good ship Freedom of the Seas .

No comments: