Of Flash Cards And Talking Dummies

Remember when I said I was having a lousy stretch of luck these days? Well, it hadn’t even begun yet. You know how they say that magicians save their best for last; well, call Fate a performer, because on Saturday night, Fate did exactly that, just for ’lil old me.

It was close to 1am, and I was in the kitchen, just heading off to sleep after a glass of water. I registered stepping  into a puddle, and that’s when my mind hit the Fast-forward button. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, and my chin was throbbing like a Harley-Davidson, if that makes any sense.

I was back in that calm, contemplatory state of higher being for a few seconds. I lay there on the ground, all serene and placid, and prodded inside my mouth with my tongue. When comprehension took me, (a few good minutes later) it was that I was feeling a gaping hole where there should not have been any hole.

My first thought, I swear to you: “Oh, there’s a hole in my mouth. Good thing I already had that glass of water,”

Then, my mind got slightly clearer, and my next thought made slightly more sense: “Why is there a hole in my mouth?”

I had fallen face first onto cold, hard tiles. My feet had literally flown backwards behind me, and I guess I would have made a perfect entry to America’s Funniest Home Videos, awesome falls category. Now I know what those poor souls felt like.

It wasn’t that bad, really; thanks to the angle and the velocity with which I had taken my grand slam, my lower incisors had lacerated the inside of my bottom lip upon impact. For the next ten minutes as I stood over the sink, blood dribbling, my only worry was what kind of monster I was going to look like the next day. Thankfully, the cut was only on the inside, and wasn’t (very) visible as long as I kept my mouth shut.

(Those last two words probably had you cracking up. Can’t say I blame you, really)

I went to bed after the blood flow slowed. We didn’t have a refrigerator in the room, so I didn’t have any ice to put on it. One of my roommates told me to go ahead and sleep it off; saliva was a natural medicine, according to him.

It was a better idea than anything else I had, so I went off to bed.

I woke up in the morning with what felt like a huge marshmallow hanging off my bottom lip. I poked at it with my finger, and just as I suspected; it WAS my lip. I stumbled to the bathroom, fortunately avoiding Him and the rest of my roommates along the way.

As I looked into the mirror, I immediately regretted it not being October. Why? I looked the perfect vampire; and more importantly, I’m not talking Twilight. This was True Blood.

I had it all: bloodshot eyes, pale face, unkempt hair, and crusted blood all over my lower, puffed up lip. You could probably use your imagination to see the fangs lurking inside the shadows of my mouth if you wanted to, but I doubt you’d be looking at me for any period of time longer than a few moments.

If you were to ask me what the most difficult part about cleaving the inside of your lower lip is, I have an easy answer: spitting. More difficult: spitting toothpaste out. Brushing was okay, but when I had to spit, well, there was my second entry to AFV, disgusting stuff category. Trust me; you DO NOT want to know how that went.

The day had just begun.

Communication was something else entirely. That morning, it was revealed to me that I was extremely, pathetically poor at charades. Not a very encouraging revelation, coupled with the realization that I was a lousy ventriloquist, too. Seriously, you have to admire the guys who get on stage with their dummies on their laps.

When I tried speaking without moving my lips (which I really didn’t have much of a choice) it sounded like I was learning a new language, even to me. God knows what it sounded like to random people who I was forced to speak to that day.

On second thoughts, maybe you could have called it sort of a ventriloquist act, as poor as it was. Technically, I was the Dummy, after all.

          And I’m not even going to go into the spittle dribbling problems that plagued me through the day. Most of the people on the street or bus most probably might have thought I was retarded, the way my lip was hanging and the drool… never mind.

Halfway through the day, I gave up trying to talk and just typed out whatever I wanted to say on my phone and showed it to whomever I was ‘speaking’ to. And I was seriously considering writing random words like ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘maybe’ and ‘hello’ on random flashcards to carry around. There was a point where I was even wracking my brains to remember all the Roadrunner cartoons I had seen, trying to recall the way Wile. E. Coyote ingeniously used his picket signs.

That was one crafty coyote. It wasn’t his fault he kept falling off cliff tops every few minutes. Maybe that’s why he used the signs in the first place; all that face-planting must have given him a lower lip condition that inhibited basic speech, too. Now I have yet another reason to root against that darned roadrunner.

I’m making light of the situation since it’s not as bad as you might think it is. Sure, it’s tough to eat, impossible to spit and people who see me for the first time tend to think I have a single digit IQ, but it could have been a lot worse, really. I’m just glad I’m still in one piece (more or less).

And the fact remains, it gave me something to post about here. From the looks of things, this blog might turn out to become a chronicle of all the tragedies that I go through in life. Well, as long as it’s entertaining; here’s to all the stubbed toes, banged foreheads and broken noses of the future!