Tomato Leaves Swath of Destruction
When we all think about how we could die, I’m certain that we all consider certain possibilities, such as: car accident, heart attack, or face down in the gutter under the 26th Avenue overpass clutching a bottle of Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor. You know, the usual. But how many of us consider the more realistic dangers, ever-lurking in the corner of life, that won’t kill us but injure us?
Thanks to me, I’m sure you all consider sting rays a very real possibility when it comes to the unexpected injury. But thanks to Derek, here’s another one you can fret over (Shelly, this could happen to YOU!):
Dressed in a donkey suit, you slip on an inflatable tomato and break your ankle.
As I say, you can’t make this stuff up.
Well, you kind of can. Now that’s he’s home from Italy, I got the full story. While he was playing Eeyore with Disney: Live! in Spain and Italy, he was in the role of clown (not Eeyore, one of his other roles) when this happened (and is it strange to anyone else that “clown” takes a mild second here?), and he was actually throwing the tomato when he slipped and fell, he didn’t actually slip on the tomato.
But god bless old world medicine. They put a cast on his ankle but neglected to set the bone, and when he went to another doctor last week they told him this. Of course, I’m playing fast and loose with the word “told” because, as Derek describes doctors in Spain and Italy, they speak only marginally less English than the translators, who speak roughly eight words. He said the only way he knew they were going to do anything was when he saw someone come at him with a needle. Apparently the injection is the preferred form of administering ANYTHING over there, including (much to my donkey-friend’s dismay), aspirin.
So he’s stateside again and, Monday, will have the pleasure of finding a work comp doctor here (and aren’t those guys the best, what with the two dollars they make off the work comp patients?) who will re-break his leg, set it, and, I imagine, put it in a cast… again.
The moral of the story? Watch out for those tomatoes, folks, especially the inflatable ones. They’re the devil’s work.
