Picture, if you will (you’re gonna have to, only Sushi and my ‘ster have been in my hovel):  our heroine (that’d be me), in the kitchen, cleaning the morning dishes.  Pre-teen, in the bathroom, getting ready for school.

A blood-curdling (and I mean blood…CURDLING…) scream splits the atmosphere.  The very ozone is sundered right between our heroine’s ears.  She drops what she’s washing and runs, soap-fisted, toward the bathroom.  She trips on the cord protector strip by the little hallway, stubbing her baby toe in a mean, freakish, just-ripped-from-the-body-kinda-painful way.  She tries to grab the closest pole of her chrome shelving unit, but ya know…soap is slippery…and smashes headlong into the right-angle corner where the bedroom and bathroom walls meet.  Her sternum takes a direct hit as her irresistible mass meets that immovable object. 

It’s a disorienting thing, this getting the wind knocked out of you.

Unable to breathe, and limping like a lopsided…er, lopsided thing…she glances at her daughter, who is still screaming.

“What?!?” our heroine hisses, zero air in her lungs.

“I got toothpaste in my eyes and IT BURNS!” the preteen screams.

“Flush them out with water.  NOW!”  the heroine hisses louder, checking her ribs for cracks, testing her foot for broken bones.  She is in agony.  Just like her kid.

It takes a good minute for her wits to reappear.  What wits, you ask?  The wits that bellow, “Don’t laugh!  This is not the right time!”  The preteen, meanwhile, has flushed, flushed, flushed.  Her eyes are no longer stinging from the mint in the toothpaste, they are stinging from way too much immersion.

“You have to get Aunty Cathy,” our heroine tells her.

“But I can’t see out of my eye!” the child whines.

“You have to go anyway, ‘cuz I can’t walk.  I think I broke my foot.”

The preteen sprints.  “Slowly,” she’s cautioned, “or you’ll end up like me.”  Like THAT advise will keep her out of therapy for any length of time.

Aunty Cathy, a veteran trauma nurse, rushes over.  “Are you okay?”

“You’re…you’re not going to believe what just happened,” our heroine stammers, fighting back tears and the twisted urge to giggle.

“Ohmygod!” Aunty Cathy exclaims.  “She showed up at my door all breathless and saying you might have broken your foot.  And she had tears in her eyes and her face was all red.  So I told her that everything would be fine, broken feet heal right up, there was no need to cry.  And she said, ‘Oh, I’m not crying, I just flushed some toothpaste out of my eyes.’  What the HELL are you two DOING this morning?!”

The good news: foot didn’t break but it’s horribly swollen and sore; sternum worked as intended, so our heroine is fine if she doesn’t try to heft anything heavier than a sandwich.  The preteen’s vision is restored (hallelujah!). 

And Aunty Cathy is still speaking to the both of them.