Sign Swiped or Oh Lucy VI

 Although my husband usually handled the lawn mowing, when he didn’t have time I would pitch in.  One day as I was mowing the shallow ditch near the road, something suddenly flew up from under the mower. It smacked me in the shoulder hard enough to make me take a step back.

It was one of those moments when I was truly afraid to look.  When I did, all I saw was a perfectly round hole, about the size of the eraser on the top of pencil.  It wasn't bleeding much, but the size and shape gave me the creeps and I was almost afraid to feel the back of my shoulder for fear that I would find an exit wound.  I cleaned and bandaged it then finished the lawn.

My husband called at lunch time and I mentioned that I had a little accident.  Trying to be funny and minimize the issue I told him that I had been shot.  (In our neighborhood that was only slightly outside the realm of possibility).  I was laughing when I said it but even after I explained he didn’t join in.  I received a rather stern lecture about how serious it could be if a foreign object was lodged in the wound and was told to go to the acute care center to have it checked out.

It was embarrassing to explain how I happened to get a perfectly round hole in my shoulder and the doctor seemed more amused than concerned.  After he checked it out he left for a minute or two only to come back with two more doctors.  I was a little worried that he needed not only a second but a third opinion and asked if it was serious.  “No”, he said, “It has just been a long time since any of us have seen a case of shrapnel “, and 3 out of the four people in the room got a big laugh out of it.

I had completely forgotten about the mower and when I got home my husband had it upside down and was untangling something from the blades.  I had been “shot” by a piece of wire frame that once held a political sign.  The same grey as the dry ground, I hadn’t seen it in the grass.  I spent the rest of the day trying to decide which editor to send the story to at Reader’s Digest:  All in A Day’s Work or Laughter the Best Medicine.