When I started writing again, I made a promise that first
and foremost I would write that which was on my heart first, then delve in to
the little trivialities that others may seem to find as funny as I do. Most of the time, it is never too deep or
weepy, and almost always it contains some observational humor that my odd and
very twisted sense of humor finds to be utterly hysterical. Again I stress that these are things that “I”
find to be funny. Often, they are
incriminating to a point and show a sense of absurdity, which generally is my
reaction. However, me relaying the story
of what happened last night, February 7, 2014, at 8:47p.m. is simply nothing
more than an out of shape oaf, relaying a self-incriminating story that had a
much funnier outcome , than could have been.
Have you ever been somewhere and had something so exciting
happen, that you forget where you are and what you are doing? You seem to lose all faculties and can
concentrate only on whatever that may be.
It could be finding out that one of your children won a special game or
award. Possibly it’s realizing that
unexpectedly you have come into some type of a windfall that is truly a welcome
blessing. It may even be the results
from a meeting that went extremely well; ten times better than you expected, causing
you to almost jump out of your skin until you can tell someone. This is exactly what happened to me last
night. As we were finishing up our work
for the day, the owner of my company called me into his office for a private
meeting, while the other employees were completing reports and securing the
office. We met for quite a while and the
meeting was a two way street. We talked
of his expectations and what he was looking for from my employees and I told
him what I needed to complete the job at hand, thus the results were better
than he was expecting them to be. We
talked of leadership, direction and the payoff he could expect from enacting my
policies. As I walked out of the
meeting, feeling quite emboldened and excited at the prospects of such, I could
think of nothing other than calling Vicki to share the great news. I got on the interstate with a great cup of
coffee, with a little cream, from PJ’s and pointed the horse to the barn in a
rapid fashion.
As many of you know, who share the cellular connection that
is Cspire , the reception on I10 within a mile or two of the Mississippi-Louisiana
line is at best, sketchy, and at worst, nonexistent. In my childlike exuberance in trying to
convey an oral summary of the minutes of my meeting, I dropped the call three
times and when the call was not dropped, all Vicki got from my yelling at the
receiver was “Johnny Cochran is mooning a tent in a van…” not my eloquent
words, which were “John Baldwin is 100%, enacting my plan.” I should have known right then and there to
calm myself a little; especially when the response to my next question
regarding what’s for dinner was “Mick Jagger Lake and a fake tomato” not the
more accurate “hamburger steak and baked potato” that was actually on the
menu. I drove the remaining thirty-eight
miles like a NASCAR driver qualifying for the pole at Daytona. I pulled in the driveway and not thirty
seconds later, did Vicki and Anna pull in beside me from the farm. As Anna ran toward me screaming “Daddy,
Daddy” to give me a big hug, I leapt from the driver seat of my old beater
truck and embraced my baby girl. We
exchanged pleasantries on the driveway for a few seconds, and she went in the house
to feed Cooper, my English Bulldog.
Vicki emerged from the back driver side of the car and
proceeded up the ridiculous incline that is my driveway, between the SUV and my
pickup. Not wanting to waste a minute of
time in telling Vicki my great news; I leaned back into the truck to grab my
briefcase in the seat and my journal, which was really a landmine, lying on the
dashboard. In my excitement, as I
hurriedly had jumped from the running truck to greet Anna, I had failed to
completely turn off the key. I quickly
grabbed for the journal on the dash, as Vicki approached the tailgate of the
truck, all of our mail in her right hand with her iPhone and her purse in the
left hand. With the dexterity of the
Hobbit and the grace of a newborn colt, I stumbled in the cab and knocked the
shifter from Park, into some other gear that definitely was not Park. The truck shot backwards as I was climbing
out onto the running board and I was stricken with a shocked paralysis that
caused me to pause for a second. As the
truck gained uncontrolled speed in reverse, I heard Vicki scream Nolon! Nolon!”
While this only happened in a matter of seconds, it played out like a half-hour
episode of The Benny Hill Show.
As the truck sped past Vicki, the open driver door from
which I was hanging slammed into her arms as she was making some futile attempt
to stop the two-ton rocket. The mail and
all of the other contents flew from her hands and littered the base of our
driveway and the gutter of the street. She
was able to keep her feet, but looked on in horror, screaming only my name, as
my feet bounced beneath the running boards as I was being dragged to oblivion,
underneath the running boards. I was
groping the steering wheel; at the 7 o’clock position with every bit of
strength I could muster in my left hand, I through the gear shifter fruitlessly
into Park with my right hand and hopelessly grasped for the brake pedal, which
was just out of reach. I looked like
one of those tight Wrangler jean-wearing cowboys, throwing his free arm about
as he holds on to the rope encircling the torso of a bull for dear life with
the other. Somehow in the fray, after
having my flailing feet beaten to a pulp, I started to run with the truck; my
feet imitating the running movement of a cartoon character winding up for a
hasty exit, stage left. The truck hit
the curb opposite my driveway, and thankfully slowed as it careened up the
incline of my neighbors yard, narrowly missing an oak tree and the master
bedroom, as it came to an unclimactic halt.
There was complete silence surrounding us in the street, and the only
sounds I heard were those of the dinging warning bell because the door was open
and the keys were in the ignition; the air blowing with a whistling sound from
the dash broken air-conditioning vents; the muffled sounds of an ESPN radio broadcast
and the clicking of the hazard lights, flashing the two green arrows, pointing
in opposite directions on the instrument cluster.
As I remained glued in a sideways fetal position, hand throbbing
from it’s grip on the steering wheel; I realized I was breathless, as if I had
just run a desert marathon with someone’s hand covering my mouth and nose. I looked up through the windshield and saw
Vicki leaning over the scratched black hood of the Escalade, face buried and
her arms cradling her head. With my legs
having the consistency of warm jelly, I climbed authoritatively into the driver
seat, turned off the flashers, lowered the driver window and started the truck. It roared to life as if nothing had just
happened and slowly proceeded out of the flowerbed, across the street, and back
up the steep incline of my driveway. I
turned of the truck, this time removing the key, as I heard the da-nah-nah, da
nah-nah of the ESPN station’s jingle. I
sat there staring at the garage doors silently for at least two minutes. After I had caught my breath and my composure
was somewhat restored, I called out for Vicki.
With visions in my head of what might have happened, and recollections
of exactly 8:42 on the morning of September 15th, 2008, when I was
thrown onto the tracks of my bulldozer and run over; I began to laugh. Vicki struggled to walk the ten feet to where
I was sitting and fell against the dirty driver door of the truck. I laughed as I said, “Now that’s something I
bet you want forget!” She began to sob
uncontrollably and shouted that I could have been killed. I began to belly laugh at that point and
said, “Yeah, but what a way to go. What
did it look like?” With an anxious stare
from her eyes and tears pouring down her face, all she could say was, “I felt
so helpless, I couldn’t do anything to stop it.” And in the most pitiful voice,
a combination of fearful speech and all out crying, she said “Your little feet
were caught under the running board, and you looked like Fred Flintstone trying
to stop the truck.”
With that being said, I could no longer control my laughter
and rolled onto the ground from the seat.
It was at that moment I realized I was going to be a bit sore and felt
the pain above my knees, which was more like carpet burn than anything. I hobbled to the house, made it to the
kitchen and leaned against the bar.
Vicki had preceded me into the house and was staring into her hands as
she sat at the kitchen table. Mortified
and visibly shaken I asked if she were alright.
She said yes, as she was desperately removing her wedding rings from her
already swelling hands from the impact of the door. We made our way to the bedroom and changed
into our bedclothes. She had settled
down quite a bit and was wearing the signature blue silk gown that I find so
comforting to see her wearing. She once
again asked the rhetorical question, “Do you realize that you could have been
killed, tonight?” All I could say in my
retort was, “Do YOU realize that you referred to these planks as ‘my little feet’ and compared me to Fred
Flintstone?” It was at that exact moment
when we both came to the conclusion that we were both okay and realized that in
our house, for better or worse, takes on a whole new meaning.
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