Stranger than fiction...

Last Friday, my husband broke his ankle at work. This wasn't fun, of course, but you know what his biggest complaint was? He didn't have a good story to tell! He simply stepped off a ladder wrong, and snapped his fibula. Thankfully, the fibula is a non-weight-bearing bone, as I quickly learned, so he was put into a walking cast and was hobbling around on it and crutches the very same day. Could have been SO MUCH worse! But poor hubby felt that if he was going to have to deal with a cast, pain meds, crutches, and six weeks off work on disability pay, he deserved a more worthwhile story - he rolled off a roof, perhaps, or fell out of a tree rescuing a bird. Something, ANYthing more dramatic than "I stepped off a ladder."

Sigh.

Don't worry, he cheered up last night. We went to Target to buy a gift for a baby shower, and he commandeered one of those wheelchair-carts to ride around on so he didn't have to carry the crutches. Now, if that was my choice to make, I'd prefer crutches. The mere thought of tootling around on one of those little carts makes me tinge pink.

But not my hubby.

Nope, he rode that chair like it was a black stallion and he was my knight in shining armor. Or, more accurately, a stick-horse, since the cart couldn't even keep up with my walking strides. That thing went SO slow! Of course, Hubby played it up by clenching the handlebars and leaning down low, keeping a determined, focused expression on his face as he zoomed at .5 mph around the produce bins, bobbing his neck out repeatedly like a chicken.

Ohhhh, no. Just wait.

So we snag a shower gift (after it takes us fifteen minutes to get down the main aisle to the baby row. I promise I could have carried him faster!! LOL) and head toward the cash registers. Hubby is behind me (I walk faster than the machine, remember) with the bibs, rubber ducky and blankets in the wheelchair basket, yelling "I'm coming, baby! I'm coming!" and basically having the time of his life by seeing how red I can get.

I stop and wait for him to catch up while deciding which line to go to. Hubby points to the one in front of us. "It's a straight shot, baby. I don't even gotta stop! Go to that one." I start walking, he put-puts behind me, yelling "Keep a look out, baby, I'm not stopping!"

I start giggling at the absurdity of our situation and decide to play along. "It's all clear! Nobody coming.....except her."

A brunette middle-aged woman is walking rapidly down the width of the row of registers. I stop and stare in horror as the scene unfolds before me, and I can't do anything about it because I'm already laughing hysterically at what I know is about to happen.....

Hubby, back to his determined, proud-steed experession, is chicken-bobbing his head and put-putting toward the register straight in front of him, seemingly in slow motion, his eyes dead ahead. This brunette, obviously on a mission, is walking straight toward him, coming at his right side. Her head is turned and her eyes are locked on the row of registers, probably searching for one without a line, and she's walking literally ten times faster than Hubby.

BOOM.

She slams into the side of his wheelchair cart and almost falls INTO the basket mounted on the front. Hubby has this horrified expression on his face, like its somehow his fault, even though HE was actually going ten times slower than the woman. The brunette is hysterically apologizing, probably thinking he's actually lame or something. And me, the weird author-wife, is standing five feet away, doubled over and clutching her stomach because she's howling with laughter. Hubby turns around in the wheelchair and yells, "I thought you said it was all clear!"


I. Lost. It.

We finally checked out, both of us still giggling uncontrollably, the poor innocent woman now several registers away and I think, still apologizing.

Hubby no longer needs a good accident-story. He's happy with this one.

Truth, stranger than fiction? OH yes.