In honor of throwback Thursday I managed to give myself flashbacks, maybe I should save this for flashback Friday.
I tripped over an extension cord in my apartment today, an extension cord that goes from the outlet behind the tv across the floor to under the coffee table. I use it to plug in my chargers while I watch tv so I can keep my devices within reach. It has been here for months upon months, if not years. It gets tripped on occasionally, never anything major, no one goes down. I didn't even go down this time, I stayed upright so I am calling this a win, but I did draw blood, a minor amount of blood but it's there.
I know toe/foot pictures aren't appreciated by many but I am in serious awe of my ability to injure myself in this way and it has a tie in to a GREAT childhood story.
This takes me back to when I was 10 at the oldest, I know I was still in elementary school. My brother and I used to watch Swiss Family Robinson A LOT. Whatever you think a lot means, go ahead and add to that, not as much as we used to watch Bedknobs and Broomsticks though, we used to rent that tape from Blockbuster CONSTANTLY! That movie has no connection to this story. What do kids who watch Swiss Family Robinson do in their back yard? They set up traps of course. We never set up a good pit trap because the yard had rock hard dirt, it might have actually been rock and not dirt. There were small "pit" traps but nothing beyond half a foot at the deepest I'd guess. What could we do well? TRIP WIRES!! We tied a rope, a thick, strong, well used rope, not string, legitimate rope, near the base of an orange tree on one end and across the sidewalk to the fence on the other end. I'd guess it was a few inches off the ground, we wanted to make sure intruders didn't see it and tripped over it. That was the plan anyway.
What really happened you ask. Well we had a big strong lovable yet easily excitable dalmatian at the time. My brother is 3 and a half years younger than me and literally my little brother at this time, probably close to the last time he was my "little" brother. Brother wanted out of the backyard but overly excitable dog that outweighed him was making this difficult so big sister to the rescue. I go out the side gate run all the way around the front of the house down the other side of the yard to the back with the plan to get the dogs attention so brother could slip out of the backyard without the dog pestering him and making it difficult.
I got the dogs attention but not the way I planned. The dog came running over to me when I started wailing, at least I assume I started wailing, I don't actually remember this happening but I do know trip wires work on people running full out that have no idea, or recollection, that they are there. I do remember having to wear the same sandals for quite a while because I had a fairly thick, and painful, rope burn across the top of each foot and couldn't put any other shoes on. I told you we used legitimate rope not string and I hit this thing at full speed, full speed of a ten year old. I don't remember having any other injuries but I imagine I had scuffed up knees, hands, and perhaps elbows because I was running and subsequently fell on concrete.
So here I sit 24 years later reminded of that incident. Apparently I still can't remember things I string across the ground and if tripping over that rope when I was ten years old and having a very memorable injury from it didn't make me learn I guess I never will.
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