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| Normande and Holstein Calves |
I’ve never been what you might call physically “coordinated”
and have run into more than my share of swinging doors and people walking down the
street. Does one swerve to the right or
left when someone approaches you on the sidewalk? On the farm, the smaller
person simply gets out of the way.
I also have an affliction that my mother emphatically pronounced
“weak ankles” when I was a child.
Back in the day, we walked to school in all weather – which
meant that slipping on icy roads and arriving wet and snow-covered at any
destination was taken as a matter of course.
Skating (both ice and roller) would inevitably result in a bad
sprain or broken tailbone, neither of which were my idea of fun.
It wasn’t until The Accident Nobody Remembers But Me that my
locomotive ability took a turn for the worse.
Those injuries have been pt’d and cat’d, and officially declared, “healed”;
my current health state has been defined as “typical for a woman of my age”.
But, I have to disagree with the experts. There is very clearly something still wrong
with me.
In spite of their best efforts, I don’t have the
coordination of a ballerina. Or even a
Weeble.
So, it came to pass that I took another “trip” last week, fell,
and smacked down on the one good knee and garnered – a “boo-boo” - for lack of
a better description.
Strike that. It was
precisely the textbook definition of “boo-boo”.
Not a puncture, gash, laceration, or contusion. Just a bit of a scrape
and no real harm done.
The only reason I put a bandage on it at all, was because I
am obsessed with squeezing antibiotic ointment over every skin break, and I
needed something to cover the goo so it didn’t look like cow sneeze.
Also, skinned knees (and elbows) have the propensity to
become fused with clothing lint and pet hair. (Don’t pretend you don’t know
what I mean.)
Eventually, the bandage had to be changed, so I tugged on
the already peeling beige tab and thought, “Hey, that’s really on there”.
I ripped it off.
With the adhesive came a square patch of skin.
Argh!
Now, I had a “boo-boo” and a definitive “bleeder” that stung
like hell, and was ten times the size of the original owie.
What was to be done?
Cover both wounds with more bandages? And when those get too dirty and nasty - injure
myself again - then again and again; creating a exponentially growing field of raw
pink and purple scabby patches up and down my leg that looks like l’ve
contracted flesh-eating disease – or become a zombie.
The last thing I want is to be waiting on customers at farmer’s
market while being stared at by frightened toddlers huddling behind their adults,
hearing whispers of “It’s not polite to point at the lady covered in Band-Aids”.
So, I decided to go the cow-snot route and deal with
whatever sticks.
Mercifully, it’s finally long pants weather.
