A Little Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing

The Pony returned Saturday from his three-week sojourn on the Mizzou campus at Missouri Scholars Academy, all smarted up from daily classes in writing and problem-solving. Those are the two areas he chose for his major and minor.

He deposited two suitcases full of dirty clothes, a packsack stuffed with writing accouterments, a bucket of toiletries, and two canvas shopping bags (one Walmart, one Barnes & Noble) containing odds and ends, near and on the two living room couches and coffee table. That meant that if Hick or I was in the La-Z-Boy, the other had to ensconce himself on the vacant cushion of the short couch. Let the record show that I made it my mission to secure the La-Z-Boy.

Poor Pony. He left us a 5'6", 130-something-pound strapping specimen of nerdhood, and returned a 125-pound waif. He has been feeding well over the past two days. I foresee a complete recovery.

Sunday I set him to harvesting various loads of laundry from those two suitcases. Funny how now that he's home, he's forgotten how to wash his own clothes. I did scam the leftover quarters from the ten-dollar half-roll that his grandma gave him to take to the Academy. I figure it was for doing his laundry, and I'm doing his laundry. To the laundress go the spoils!

This morning I woke up with a pain in my toes. The two smallest toes on my left foot. The little piggy that had none, and the little piggy that went WEE WEE WEE all the way home. Most mornings I awake to various aching joints. But the toes were new achers. I was puzzled for about an hour. Huh. Did my feet hurt yesterday in Save-A-Lot? Did my shoes feel too tight? Did I get stepped on by a minipony? No, no, and no. Then it all came back to me.

The Pony had just fished underwear and socks out of his small suitcase. It was wedged on its side between the long couch and the coffee table. Hick had been sitting on the short couch. I got up to turn on the washer, and rammed those hungry and loud piggies into the bottom of The Pony's small suitcase. I did not ram them on the curvy corner that is flexible, like the cartilage of a dolphin's fin. No. I rammed them on those hard plastic posts that are used as feet for the suitcase when you let go of its pull handle and park it while waiting in line. I would not want to see a slow-motion re-enactment, because I imagine those two toes bent all the way back against the side of my foot, as if they had no bones. I cannot bring myself to look and see if they are purple. I know they are facing the right way, because I got my shoe on this morning. And they feel just fine now in my red Crocs.

Of course I blame Hick for my accident. Val is not one to careen through the house willy-nilly, slamming into objects in plain sight. If not for the stretched-out short feet of Hick, narrowing my pathway between the couches, I would have completed my journey free and clear. It's his fault, really, that I almost dislocated my toes. And to rub salt in that closed wound, Hick made his turned-up-nose, rolling-eyes face when I screamed in pain. That man is so histrionic! He might as well try for a Tony. He has not even noticed that The Pony is a shadow of his former self.

One trip. Two casualties. I think The Pony and I will both recover.