Moose in the Kitchen

The last thing you want to hear when someone walks in the house is, “Hey!…Um, where’s your car?”

Pause.

Eyes blinking.

Pause.

Crickets chirping.

Pause.

Dog hair drifting lazily in the sun before falling to coat the carpet.

Pause.

“What do you mean, ‘Where’s my car?’”

We stared at each other, me envisioning spending the next three hours filing police reports and trying to remember what the hell my license plate number is, him envisioning not getting dinner because I was busy filing police reports and trying to remember what the hell my license plate number is.

His brow cleared. Apparently, he borrowed my car so he could go borrow someone else’s car, and hadn’t yet returned the borrowed car to get my car. And forgot about it. If you didn’t quite follow that, don’t worry. Neither did I. As long as no police reports are involved and the car is returned to the driveway posthaste with no further action on my part, I am satisfied.

The glow of lazy satisfaction dimmed when I learned the reason for the car shuffle. He needed a truck so he could pick up a radial arm saw. Do you know what a radial arm saw is? Neither do I. Do you know why we might need one in our garage? Neither do I.

Never wonder aloud why someone might need to own a radial arm saw. Inevitably it will be pointed out that no one can wear 47 pairs of shoes. To which I reply, “OH, YES ONE CAN.” But the shoe collection does lessen my traction in the Unnecessary Purchase department. I have no problem with power tools or motorcycles or anything else he wants to buy with his hard-earned money, but if it has whirling blades, I don’t want to be in the same room with it. Currently, that didn’t seem to be an option. I was informed that I didn’t have to do anything, “just hold the hand cart.”

Do you hear the creeping, bony fingers of doom in that sentence? So did I. I am a person who can’t butter a slice of toast without needing a band-aid. Last week, I turned my head away from my computer to sneeze and misjudged the space between my face and the pointy-tipped dining room chair. I whacked my cheekbone so hard it didn’t stop hurting until yesterday. I’m not someone who should have anything to do with power tools. I shouldn’t even LOOK at them, lest they jump off the table and eat a small child.

I mentally tallied my insurance deductible and followed him outside. He opened the back of the truck and I saw The Box. It was about three feet by three feet. Which makes it nine square feet of SOLID EVIL. It hulked in the truck bed, burgeoning with menace. I thought I saw the shadow of horns and perhaps a gleam of pointy, pointy teeth. I stopped calculating my insurance deductible and began mentally choosing the outfit I wanted to be buried in.

My job was to crouch below the mouth of the truck and hold the hand cart, so, in theory, this nine square feet of SOLID EVIL could slide lightly down, landing like swan’s down at my feet. I crouched obediently and began reviewing this need of mine to HELP PEOPLE. To make their lives easier by not saying “DO IT YOURSELF, BUCKO.” I vowed that if my knees didn’t crack under the weight, exploding in a shower of bone shards and cartilage, if my head didn’t smash like a pumpkin left on the porch too long, if I lived to tell the tale, I would NEVER AGAIN be so obliging.

As that box began its descent toward the hand cart, I swear time stopped. It started again in shifts and jolts as the box slid, as promised, out of the truck. The box was so wide I couldn’t hold the hand cart underneath it and keep all body parts safely out of harm’s way. I tried to brace all my weight against the nine square feet of SOLID EVIL, while still holding the hand cart straight out in front of me like you might hold a molding banana you just found on your pillow.

Then time sped up and I found myself on the ground next to the box, both knees and noggin intact, but my neck feeling like it had been licked by Satan and then breathed on by a few of the lesser demons. I yelped and clutched my neck. Which looked something like this:

Yes, I got injured by a cardboard box. Part of me wonders how that’s even possible. The rest of me is thankful it wasn’t much, much worse. Closed coffin worse.

He kissed the small scratch [gaping, festering wound] and said, “At least you can blog about it.”

Which is surprisingly comforting.

I lived to type the tale, which, for a few drawn-out seconds as the box descended from the truck straight toward my head, was no foregone conclusion. And I plan to stay alive. By never going near that box again. Of course, the radial arm saw is now OUT of the box, and the only thing worse than a radial arm saw IN the box is a radial arm saw OUT of the box. Because if it could injure me while STILL IN THE BOX, what could it do while plugged into the wall? Blades unfettered and hungry? I like my fingers. I like them attached to my palms, not floating in formaldehyde in a jar on the mantel.

And I need them to tell you about the time I forgot to use pot holders when reaching into the oven for a tray of cookies.

Related posts:

1. Step Away from the Vehicle
2. Dumb and Dumber: In Two Parts
3. Thirsty Work
4. I Have a Box
5. You People Are Smarter Than I Am. So, Help.