Who Put That There?

Our youth group divides itself in to more manageable small groups each semester, and this semester my small group decided that it would be a nice idea to take turns bringing homemade goodies to Wednesday nights to share amongst ourselves. We played the nose touching game to decide who would bring cookies first, and by the time that I realized what was going on, it was very clear that my nose was the only one that was not being touched. For those of you who don’t know the genius of the nose touching game, it consists of each individual touching their nose in order to ‘elect’ the last person to feel their nose to do a certain task (usually an undesirable task—it really is just a slightly refined version of the playground “not it” game). Anyway, last night I had to make some goodies for tonight and Jori was kind enough to help me out. Earlier this week she made some cookies for a lab meeting. They were easy to make, but she reckoned that the addition of butterscotch chips (lets call them BS-chips for shorthand) would significantly enhance the gooey goodness of these cookies. Unfortunately we did not have any BS-chips in the house, so my part in making the cookies was to go out and acquire some BS-chips. Our car recently died, and thus I had to literally run to the store.

I left out of the front door with some trash to take out on my way. I stopped off at the garbage can, and then was faced with a decision. Do I continue out the front way and walk around the block, or do I take a short cut through the back yard? Seeing as it was bitter cold out, I opted for the shortcut, and I also made the decision that running there would limit my time in the cold as much as possible. As I was running through the backyard, I thought that I would be ‘cute’ and wave to Jori in the kitchen, and just as I was realizing that she couldn’t see me out in the dark—Wam! I was flying high and down onto my back. What the??? As I collected my thoughts, I realized quickly what had happened. For what ever reason, someone a long time ago tied a telephone cord into our maple tree in the back yard. This happened so long ago that the tree has grown around the cord such that it is permanently fixed into the tree. Fortunately there is enough of the cord that we can stretch it to our back porch to make a nice clothesline. However, the telephone cord hangs about neck level, is nearly invisible in broad daylight, and completely invisible at night. So...you guessed it, I literally clothes-lined myself while running. It was classic. Straight out of Home Alone. Textbook. Neck gets snagged, feet continue in a forward and upward motion. Stay suspended for a brief moment in a parallel to the ground pattern and wait for gravity to take care of the rest. If only there had been more snow on the ground. As it would happen to be, there was only about 1 inch. Bugger.

As I got to my feet and did a self inventory for damages, I looked into the kitchen window. Jori still (and fortunately) couldn’t see anything, but I could tell by the look on her face that the sound had startled her quite a bit. Anyway, I continued onto the store sniggering to myself all the way. I picked up the BS-chips, and headed for home. When I returned, I naively asked Jori if she had heard a strange noise about the time that I left. She said that she did, and it sounded like the neighbor’s house was being broken into. I told her the real reason, and we both had a good long laugh. The good news is that I am fine despite a slightly bruised feeling in my throat. The bad thing is that it didn’t leave a really cool looking black and blue line across my neck. I mean, what fun is this sort of thing if you don’t have some evidence for the pain you went through right?