In Part 1 of Bad Week for a Big Toe you heard how I left some of my hide and blood in the Pacific Ocean off the Carmel beach while trying to impress Regina on our first date. And of the impression I left with the doctor who ultimately was called on to repair the damage I had done to my right big toe.
Unknown to me, I had also done some damage to my budding relationship on that first date. But that was nothing compared to what lay in store at the 4th of July Picnic at Lake Del Valle outside of Livermore that we were headed to next.
Three short days after visiting the doctor to have my butchered right big toe tended to, and while still limping rather significantly from the discomfort of that injury, I called on Regina and picked her up for my company’s 4th of July Picnic.
She looked delightful, with her strawberry hair up, halter top and shorts, and ready for a warm day in the sun.
She must have noticed the limp and asked me how my toe was.
I had to come clean and tell her that the doctor had been pretty harsh with me over not coming in immediately on being injured as Regina had suggested. She took some little joy in that I believe.
Out at the lake, sides were being chosen up for a friendly Baseball Game. I really didn’t feel like running since I could barely walk. So Regina and I sat in the shade of a great big old Live Oak tree and watched until the BBQ spread was done and ready to eat.
After eating our fill of burgers, chips, and sodas, Regina and I wandered away from the continuing ball game. We found our way over to the boat rental shack and decided to rent a small motorboat and spend some time puttering around the lake. With the paperwork done and my money down, we bought some snacks and loaded up into the boat. We headed up lake, me in the stern running the small outboard, Regina lounging up front in the bow, sunning, and generally making it difficult for me to pay attention to where I was going.
Being an outdoor guy, I noticed trash from all of the other boaters floating in the lake water and began to steer towards the plastic bags and other stuff that I could see so as to scoop them out of the water. Regina got the fever as well and was soon leaning forward out over the bow, with her knees on the seat making it even harder to focus on my navigation.
Regina saw a large plastic bottle floating off the starboard bow and pointed me towards it. As the boat approached the bottle, I could see that it was a 1 gallon sized plastic jug, looking for all the world like an old bleach bottle. Pretty big for anything we had seen up until then, and I couldn’t figure out why a bleach bottle would be floating in the lake, but since we were cleaning up, it wouldn’t be floating in the lake for much longer.
I was proud to display my control of the boat as I slowed down and brought us right past that old bottle. Regina reached out to grab it. She had a good hold on it and the boat was slowly motoring by when that old bottle just seemed to pull back.
Almost yanked Regina clean out of the boat it did. In fact, I had to let go of the outboard motor handle to grab Regina to keep her from accidentally abandoning ship.
It seemed as though that bottle had grown rather attached to floating in the lake.
After getting Regina fully back into the boat, only a little wetter for the experience, I turned the boat around and went back after that bottle. It was a matter of pride at this point. After all, if that bottle had been a guy and had treated Regina that way, I would have punched his lights out…I surely couldn’t let a piece of plastic get away with man-handling her.
As I approached that bottle a second time I shifted the outboard into neutral and told Regina I would get it. Well, I grabbed on and pulled the bottle up to see a rope tied through the handle leading back into the water. I started pulling in the rope and after about 35 feet’s worth, found that the other end of the rope was tied to a large square lead weight with an eyebolt through it.
Regina thought we should throw the thing back, but I maintained that nope, trash was trash and didn’t belong in the lake.
We continued to putter around the lake cleaning up trash until the time was up and we had to return the boat to the rental dock.
At the dock, we cleaned all of the trash out of the boat and I decided that I would keep that lead block, figured I would have some use for it sooner or later. Really didn’t figure to use it as soon as I did though.
Done with that we gathered up all of our stuff and headed up to check the boat back in. My arms were full of all left over snacks, towels, and that lead weight when the man at the rental shack asked to see my papers. I tried to pass all that stuff to Regina. She got it all.
All except that lead block with the eyebolt.
That single piece, slipped through either her or my arms (I really can’t tell you who’s) and it followed the laws of physics.
Very, very enthusiastically followed the laws of physics as a matter of fact.
In school I had learned that a mass accelerates at 32 feet per second per second when subjected to gravity’s pull. I swear they are wrong about that. I have run the math on that one several times in my life; if they are right that block of lead was only traveling at about 7 miles an hour when it hit my wounded right big toe.
Of course ballistic calculations tell us that terminal impact energy is mass times the velocity squared. Running the math on and factoring in the area of my toe that the weight landed on says that the lead landed on my toe with a force of over 350 pounds per square inch.
Even that doesn’t do it justice.
When that block hit my right big toe, I could feel the ground shake.
Regina felt it too, saying; “What was that”
I was having a tough time seeing straight again.
At least this time I didn’t teach her any new words…but that was just because she had heard them all the previous Sunday.
Regina was a predictable girl if nothing else, and bless her delicate little heart, really felt that we should jump in the car and find a doctor.
I, however, was having none of that. I convinced her that it really wasn’t a problem, and besides, we had a movie planned and ice cream after that I had no intention of missing. So off to the show we went. Well, the movie was pleasant, the ice cream was good, and after that I took her shooting pool until about 2 in the morning before dropping her off at home.
When I got back to my house I set to trying to remove my right shoe. It wasn’t particularly pleasant. And in fact, the only way that I finally succeeded, was to take out my Folding Hunter Knife, and cut the shoe off of my foot.
On peeling off the sock, my toe looked a bit the worse for the day’s wear.
It had started bleeding again at some point (pretty sure I knew when), and that soaked through the gauze and the sock. It had stopped bleeding again and while I wasn’t sure when that was ether, it had been long enough that the sock and gauze were an imbedded part of the scab. Oh, it had also turned an astounding purple, and seemed flatter than it had been before. Out of morbid curiosity, I weighted the lead block in at 14.5 pounds.
Next morning the toe didn’t look any better; seemed like Regina had been right again, so I packed myself up and drove to the doctors.
Some 45 minutes later, I had been seen by a nurse, the wound had been cleaned and x-rayed and the doctor had just finished his exam and had ordered another shot of antibiotics when I asked him: “Well doc, what do you think?”
He looked at me over the top of his half glasses; Stared really, really hard is a better description, and said: “What I think is you should have gotten this foot in here yesterday when I could have done something about the swelling and reset the toe. But, as it is, the best I can do is put you in a walking cast for a few weeks and see how it heals.”
“And to be quite honest about it, I really don’t think you care much about what I think, or else you wouldn’t wait so long so often before coming in to ask me”.
After the plaster cast set, I drove by Regina’s house. We sat out on the front porch swing and she told me; “I really don’t think we should see each other anymore, you use some bad language, and seem to hurt yourself a lot, I don’t think can deal with either of those things”.
Yep, what started out as a promising dating situation only lasted 5 days…..heck it took a lot longer than that for the toe to heal up.
Copyright © 2011 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved
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