Whatever injuries I’ve had in my life, they mostly afflicted the left side of my body. Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions, but it seems that my non-verbal capacity for creativity has had amazingly self-destructive side-effects.
In no particular order, I’ve had my left leg shattered, my left knee skewered, my left pink broken, my left arm severely bruised, my left eye socket broken, some of my left fingers cut or bruised, my left shoulder dislocated.
Granted, I did sustain some injuries to body parts on the right, but that list is considerably shorter: a few fingers bruised, a toe broken.
Last week, the list of leftish injuries grew even longer.
First, I hurt my arm and leg and severely bruised a rib or two in a rather unfortunate fall. (Ouch, ouch and tripple ouch!)
Then, after a few days of walking and moaning like a battered old bird, I up and went all non-verbal and creative again. While assisting Top4 with yet another stuffed animal, I sewed right across my left index finger (which had already been cut half-through when I was a child. Yes, the war against left started early on…)
(Didn’t hurt a bit. Turns out my finger was quite happy to leave Ms Left Rib the stage, as she is a real drama queen.)
As Top4 darted around, a bit scared of the bits of needle sticking out of my finger on both sides (the needle had broken half-way through, so my advice if ever you want to sew body parts: use industrial strength needles), I sped to the kitchen sink, glad that this was at least an injury I could cool with water. (Had I done that to my poor rib, surely my heart would’ve stopped beating).
Blabbering on about how good it was that Top3 had just had his First Aid exams in school, for which I had helped him prepare, I stood stooped over the kitchen sink, cooling my mangled finger, suppressing the bouts of laughter I felt rummaging in my belly, both for the child’s sake and for my poor ribs.
“See? There is no war, just a few hick-ups,” the left side of my brain tried to persuade me, hoping I would forget about the right side and its evil plan to kill me creatively.
I didn’t, of course. When I had tended to the finger, disinfecting and bandaging it, we took a little break. Later, we finished our work on the stuffed animal, and I asked Top4 to draw her new friend in various positions, adding a background of her own choice.
I like the drawing below best. I second the birds plight – curious about the mouse, not knowing whether it is an insanely large but essentially harmless freak of nature, or a cold-blooded killer, a mutant, a b-e-a-s-t. (Also, I envy the bird its cage. I could use some protection!)
