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The Eclectic Pen - "Taking a bath" my first attempt at being funny

By: Harold Wayne H. (HaroldWayneHamlin)   + 2 more  
Date Submitted: 1/6/2009
Genre: Humor & Entertainment » Humor
Words: 3,135
Rating:

Please advise if you find this in the least funny. If you do not please advise that it was not. Harold Wayne Hamlin captainpaycheck@hotmail.com Letter to a friend -- Taking a bath By Wayne Hamlin 3604-59th St. Lubbock, Texas 79413-4733 (806) 687-1383 Feb. 6th; 9:10 AM Dear Friend Remember me? Boy, have things gone to hell since I last wrote to you. You simply will not believe what I am going to tell you! The fire department moved me from fire station # 7 to station # 12 back in late December. They moved me over there to help write the procedures for the Heavy Rescue Team. About a week before they moved me, I packed up everything, including the computer. I am a creature of habit, and this move upset my way of doing everything, hence the delay in writing to you. Before I could get all my stuff set up at the new station I broke my leg and have been at home for the last month. What happened; I was on a ladder at home working on the new room I am adding to the house. I went up the ladder I have been using for over twenty years and fell about 4 or 5 feet, landing on my heels. This ladder, over the years, has bent, bowed, fell, twisted, and buckled causing me to fall several times in the past, but always I felt it bend, fall, twist, or buckle before hand and always managed to save myself. This time there was no warning at all. One minute I was on the ladder and the next minute I was on the ground (concrete). I do not remember falling but I do remember hitting on my heels. I did a PLF (Parachute Landing Fall) trying to break the fall but the damage to my right heel had been done. 300 plus pounds hitting the ground (concrete) while wearing house slippers (I do a lot of work in house slippers so I can take them off easily if I go into the house) was just too much. I almost passed out from the pain of walking to my bed. I knew my wife and daughter could not carry me if I did not make it to my bed so I just focused on getting to the bed and ignored the pain. The foot and leg doubled in size. I can tell you a 150-pound leg and foot, twice-normal size, is a B I G ******* foot and leg. I lay in bed for about 3 days, crawling around to the bathroom, before the swelling started to go down. Everyone was telling me to go to the doctor and I kept telling everyone, that the doctor would not do any thing until the swelling went down. Hell, I could barely make it to the bathroom let alone to the hospital. A couple of times, at night, I am not sure I made it out of bed and to the bathroom in time. I would get to the bathroom and had nothing to pee. Then, when I crawled back to the bed the damn carpet would be wet. The trail of damp carpet helped though, I could find my way in the dark (I could not reach the light switch from the floor) back to bed by following the damp trail. Just a minute, The old lady is calling. I will have to go see what she wants or I will have to listen to her the rest of the day telling me how I ignore her. Be back as quick as I can. 11:00 AM, Feb. 6 Th. 10:23 PM, Feb. 6th, Well, the wife just wanted me in bed with her. Her stomach has been hurting and I think she may have an ulcer. She gets very stressed over the smallest things and goes ballistic. She watched bowling on TV while I read; she just wanted me with her. We went to lunch at 12:30, then I took her to bowl at 2:30 PM while I drove to a friend’s house, about 20 miles away, to pick up a nail gun he let me barrow. I am going to start working on the house again tomorrow. At 4:30 PM we drove about 30 miles to see my sister and her husband. He wants some tile work done and is willing to swap a satellite system for me to oversee three people who will set the tile. He sells satellite systems so he is going to make out real good. He told me that they would give him the systems if I sign up for a six months term. I would help him for free, so it works out OK. We just got back home. I will close for now. Hope you like all this petty stuff I am sharing with you. Just thought you might like to know how my day went. Feb. 7th, 8:00 AM. Now to continue about the leg. Gout set in on the foot and the unbearable pain was what forced me to go to the doctor. I went to the ER on a Saturday Night. Bad timing, a town of two hundred thousand has a lot of people in the ER on Saturday Night. They took x-rays and gave me a shot for pain. Neither they or I thought of Gout as causing the pain at the time but after the shot wore off at home, I knew something was wrong and went back to the ER Sunday Night. They gave me a shot for the gout and told me that I might have fractured my right heel. The gout disappeared and the swelling went down but it was over a week before I could get in to see a doctor and get a cast put on. I had test after test; boy, do they know how to run up a bill. Any way, I get the cast put on my right foot and I spend another week in bed looking out at the room I am adding on to the house. It was a bitch lying there and not being able to work. My computer I had at the fire station was boxed up, and I could not get down the stairs to use the computer that is down there. This is part of the reasons I have not written sooner. It is difficult learning to use crutches; there is an art to it. Taking a bath is another problem. Here is what happened. I put a trash bag on my leg and attempted to get into the bathtub. Now as for me, going two weeks without a bath did not bother me too much (under the circumstances), but my wife was raising hell. Anyway, I get to the tub; the question is how do I get in the tub. I have one leg and I can not put any weight on the right foot at all. I can use the crutch to get into the tub, right. Well, I get my one good foot into the tub and attempt to put weight on the crutch to push my self into the tub. Guess what? The crutch slips on the tile floor and I grab the tub's glass sliding door frame for support; that was a mistake. I am now flat of my back in the tub, (a wonder I did not bust my head open) with the shattered glass sliding door on top of me. Let me tell you a 300-pound fat man with a broken leg can create a small earthquake when he falls flat of his back like that. My wife can tell you a 300 pound fat man flat on his back in a tub with his legs sticking up in the air under a pile of door framing, wall tiles, and safety glass is not a pretty sight. After she gets over her initial shock, she is laughing so hard that it takes her at least 10 minutes before she even attempts get me up. It took almost an hour for me to get out of the tub and back in bed. I was so grateful for having not been hurt in this first attempt at taking a bath with my cast that I decided that I would not tempt fate again by attempting to take a bath for at least another week or two. You know it. My wife was bitching from the time she stopped laughing until I agreed to take a bath. Hell, I told her the damage to the bathroom was her fault. I was content with my smell so I did not see why she would complain about me not taking a bath. My brother is here, I have to go. Feb. 7, 9:30 AM Feb. 7, 3:18 PM My brother has a 25-foot trailer and he took me to the lumberyard to get 12 (2x8x24) floor joists. I am going to work on the room come hell or high water. To continue with the bath. The wife cleaned up the bathroom and did a good job of cleaning the glass, tile, metal, etc. out of the tub. Well, she just kept a bitching about me needing a bath. After 30 years of marriage, I know there is no way out of it so I attempted to take a bath the next day. Practice makes perfect. I crawl to the bathroom. I don't trust the crutch anymore. I crawl into the tub and get my fat ass all settled with my cast hanging over the side of the tub. That was a mistake. I should have run hot water into the tub before I got in. I had to sit there and run the water before the hot water gets to the faucet. Now this water is about 40 degrees and it took at least 30 minutes and 1000 gallons before the hot water gets to the tub. I am sitting there freezing my balls off, can't move, all I can do is yell for the wife to come and help me up. She just sticks her head in the door and says "serves you right". If I could have got up from the tub I would have killed her. The hot water finally gets to the tub and I close the drain. At this point everything would have been fine, but, you know it, the wife comes in to supervise. I, a 52 year old man, does not know how to wash my ass, she says, and she wants me C L E A N before I get back in bed. Well, I know I am trapped like a rat. After 30 years of marriage, I know it is hopeless to argue with her so I come up with an idea. I splashed water on her hoping she would go away. That was a mistake. She cussed me out and filled a pot with hot water from the kitchen and scaled my ass. Let me tell you, when that super-hot water hit me I was like a whale sounding. Water from the tub was on the ceiling, walls, and floor. Water was everywhere but in the tub. But worse of all I soaked her in my effort to get out of the tub and away from that hot water. She makes a beeline back to the kitchen for more hot water. I admit I am getting slow in my thinking but I figure this situation out real quick. I can not get out of the tub to lock the door and there is no telling how many pots of hot water her bowling arm can throw on me before she gets tired. I call for a truce real quick. I just accept my fate (like a dog getting a bath) and planned on just toughing it out. About the time I give in, she leaves. Go figure, here I am ready for her to wash me and she leaves. I thought “Good Riddance”. That was a mistake. She comes back. She has stripped off her wet clothes and now has a damn hard, green pot-scrubbing pad. She gets into the tub with me and starts scrubbing my ass. It is all I can do to hold my tongue, but I can assure you I was calling her names in my head. I am basically a brave man but after 30 years of marriage, I know if I said anything, she would go get some more hot water and I sure as hell did not want any more of that. She commenced to rub me raw all over, even some places I have never washed before. She would soap the scrubbing pad up real good, work me over for about 5 minutes, turn around with her back to me and rinse the pad out under the faucet. This torture went on for a long time, and I was like a red beet. Let me tell you that between the scalding and that scrubbing pad, I was almost most dead. Well, she turned around to rinse out the green pad again and I told her my leg (which had been hanging over the side of the tub all this time) was killing me. I ask her to move it a little bit so I could get some relief. That was a mistake. Picture this, I am sitting down in the tub, facing the faucet. She is standing up (between my legs) between the faucet and me with her back to me. She reaches over to lift my leg and move it a little bit. Well, when she attempts to lift the 150-pound leg she farts right in my face. When I regained consciousness it took me a bit to get oriented. A siren is going like hell, an oxygen mask is over my face, a big breasted EMS lady is shaking me saying, "Mr. Hamlin, can you hear me"? My wife is sitting on a jump seat across from me, crying and holding her arm, which is in a sling. It was like waking up in the twilight zone. The last thing I remembered was my wife farting. It was about this time that my brain perceived unbearable pain signals from my head and my balls. After I was treated in the ER for my head injury, they kept me overnight for observation. I kept telling them my balls hurt real bad. They told me my balls were OK. I am too fat to bend over and look at my balls but I could feel them with my hand and they were big, real big, and hurt like hell. My wife, with her broken arm, set up all night with me. We pieced together as best we could as to what took place in the tub after she farted. This is her story. I do not remember anything that took place from the time she farted until I woke up in the ambulance. When she farted, my reflex was to get my nose as far away from her ass as I could. I jerked away without really thinking about it. Will, for every action there is a reaction and when I jerked my head and shoulders backward to get away from her fart, my soaped up ass shot in the opposite direction, toward the faucet. I hit my head on the back of the tub and knocked myself unconscious. She said that when my ass made contact with her feet she lost her balance. In trying to gain her footing she stepped on my balls two, maybe three, times before she fell and broke her arm on the side of the tub. She was in a lot of pain but thought to turn off the water and open the drain. She said that this probably saved me from drowning. She called 911 and got dressed before the EMS got to the house. Of course she just left my fat ass in the tub naked as hell. She said that the first two EMS could not get my 300-pound soaped up ass out of the tub and that they had to call another ambulance to get more help. It took all four EMS to get me out of the tub and on the stretcher. The next morning, before they released me, my daughter came and took my wife to get our car so that she could take me home later. After they released me and we got to the car, my wife said it was too hard for her to drive with one arm so I got in the car to drive home. Well, my balls were still hurting badly and I kept my legs cocked wide apart so as not to put any pressure on them. I did not get half way home before I got my cast (on my right foot) stuck between the gas pedal and the brake. I did real well controlling the run away car for about two blocks before I sideswiped a station wagon and rear-ended a pickup, totaling my car. We were very lucky no one was hurt, but my foot was still stuck between the gas pedal and the brake. I was too fat to bend over to get to it and free it. Well, some do-gooder called 911 on his cell phone and the city dispatcher sent the police and the fire department to get me out. Guess who shows up to get me out? You guessed it. Station # 12, my station, my crew rescued, ME, their Captain. I can live with all that has happened, I think. Yes, I can live with everything that took place, even the fart. The thing I can not live down however, is when, on the six o'clock news (where everyone in town can see me) they show a close up of me as my crew carries me on the stretcher to the ambulance and all I am saying is, "Watch my balls. Watch my balls”. This is why I have not written to you my friend until now. I will answer each of your letters at a latter date. Pray for me, I need all the help I can get. Your Friend Wayne Hamlin

The Eclectic Pen » All Stories by Harold Wayne H. (HaroldWayneHamlin)

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