This Just Happened

  • Broken Fortunes

    I got out of the shower. I toweled off. I admired my perfectly sculpted body (if by “sculpted” you mean “sculpted to look like a slightly lumpy tree, or hill”) in the mirror. I kissed my guns. Literally. I pulled two .45s out of the medicine cabinet, and I made out with them.

    Okay, that part isn’t exactly true.

    Anyway. I saw that I had the wrong t-shirt.

    I decided, hey, I need a different t-shirt.

    Boxers on (but nothing else), I wandered into the bedroom.

    “Nothing else” means “no glasses.”

    I am near-blind without them, but I thought, fuck it. I know the house. I’ve done this a million times.

    Our bedroom has no overhead lighting. It has only lamplight, because some dick-brained asshole wired our house with the grace and skill of a swollen-brained 4-year-old. I reached over to fumble for the lamp. My hand bumped something as I flicked the light on — and the light revealed an event unfolding:

    A glass candle tumbling to the floor.

    A carpeted floor.

    So, shouldn’t break. Whew.

    Unless, unless, it were to hit the side of our Fake-Ass Bamboo Planter, which it jolly well goddamn did.

    Smash!

    So.

    There I was, damp, blind, half-naked, standing in a literal ring of broken glass in an ill-lit room.

    Fascinating that I had just read Will Hindmarch’s daily bloggery about Die Hard, because there I am rocking it John McLane-style, in my own bedroom.

    Good times, good times.

    I had to kneel down and pick up glass with my face inches away from the floor (door closed so the dogs didn’t come ambling in wondering if I was playing some kind of Funny Human Game like when I do sit-ups and the little dog totters up onto my chest so she can enjoy the ride), and gently search out pieces of glass without cutting myself.

    That went fine. If by “fine” you mean, “Hey, is that blood on the carpet? Oh, that’s my blood from when I stuck a tiny mote of glass into the meat of my index finger.”

    Anyway. Glass is cleaned up.

    That was really super-fun. I love this house! Let’s do it again real soon, house! Woo!

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    January 13th, 2010 | terribleminds | 11 Comments

About The Author

ChuckWendig

Chuck Wendig is equal parts novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He is the author of the novels DOUBLE DEAD, BLACKBIRDS, and MOCKINGBIRD. In addition, he's got a metric boatload of writing-related e-books available, including the popular 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with wife, dog, and newborn progeny.

11 Responses and Counting...

  • Will 01.13.2010

    Karl, shießen fenster!

  • Gloria Oliver

    Eek! Glad you came through that. As I grow more blind each year, I’m keeping my glasses closer and closer. Bed night table now. lol.

    And no more blood sacrifices. You have a trip coming. :P

  • Minstrel

    The only scar I have on my body is actually from picking up a broken vodka bottle (aside from the pox one). I heal up well.

    After I got myself cut up like that, my mom sold me an old Native American trick (Polish joke, pay it no mind): cloth damped with rubbing alcohol. Picks up glass like hell.

  • heather

    Ow!

    I pretty much don’t do ANYTHING without my glasses. I get tempted sometimes to wear them into the shower, if it weren’t for the fact that the water on them would render them useless anyway.

    Very glad you came through it without too much damage. Hope you got your bad luck out of the way before your trip now!

  • Josh

    That sounds painful. At least you don’t do anything that requires you repeatedly striking your fingers against something after you’ve had shards of glass stabbed into their meat.

    …wait…

  • Julie

    Well that sounds like an adventure.

    Interesting how chaos theory works, huh?

    Mine was when a framed document fell from the wall straight down and instead of going to the floor it fucking did a half turn right before it hit the glass table encircling the floor lamp with the corner of the heavy wooden frame.

  • Maggie Carroll

    Huh. Must be the same dick-brained asshole who wired my apartment. No overhead lighting in either of the bedrooms. Or the living room.

    Also, it might be the hormones, but you nearly killed me with the “hauled two 45s out of my medicine cabinet” line.

  • John

    My mom managed to break her big toe once when she got out of the tub sans glasses and tried to kick a piece of fuzz off her foot. The lack of depth perception meant she kicked the wall trying.

  • CKHB

    What an amazingly on-topic photo you found for this post! (Oh, and I think we had the same electrician do our apartment.)

  • Greg Stolze

    Good call locking the dogs out. If they’d caught you bending over, it would’ve been cold nose to the sphincter, you’d have shot forward, knocked yourself out against a bedside table or something, and then bled out after landing on glass. Five years later, Snopes.com or the Mythbusters would address the story.

    -G.

  • Chuck

    Wait. I could’ve been famous?

    Dang.

    – c.

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