Have a Nice Trip, See You Next Fall

Last night I was sitting in my dark basement lair, minding my own business, tickling the keyboard and my own funny bone with some future ideas for fake book reviews...and up in my living room there arose such a clatter that I ran to the bottom of the 13 stairs to see what was the matter.

It was a terrible noise! A bumpity thump thump!

"ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?"

I could see part of Hick's noggin through the stair rails. Not where his noggin should have been.

"Yeahhh. I'm okay."

"What happened?"

"I tripped over your suitcase."

"You're SURE you're okay? Did you hurt your butt again?"

"No. I'm okay. I lost some of my banana."

I guess Hick was crawling around picking up slices of banana that had catapulted out of his bowl of strawberries and bananas that I make for him almost nightly.

Here's the culprit:

Here's the thing. Hick was totally at fault!

That is a cheap suitcase (it does have wheels and a collapsible handle) that I got free with a catalog order. I had planned to take it on Casinopalooza 2, but Hick had a sturdier one that he wasn't going to use, so I left this one behind. When we returned from Casinopalooza 2, I unpacked that very evening, and set my used suitcase beside this new suitcase for Hick to take back downstairs. That's a man's job, by cracky, and not Val's.

Somewhere along the line, the next day, perhaps, Hick took his own suitcase down, and the one that I had used, and left this one on the couch. We don't use the long couch much, as it makes one watch TV at an angle. Hick sometimes sits on it to use the coffee table and eat a quick lunch, if I am in the La-Z-Boy.

When Hick hurt his butt hamstring a few weeks ago, he was in so much pain that he didn't even play around in Shackytown, but came inside and laid down on the long couch. He put the suitcase on the floor, standing up on its wheels, against an end table that is to the right in that picture. There was still almost the full walkway from the kitchen into the living room.

That suitcase has been sitting in that area AT LEAST three weeks. Maybe four. Depends on when Hick hurt his butt hamstring. So...I don't know how Hick lost his senses last night, and rounded that turn without noticing the suitcase sitting there. Maybe he would have tripped over the end table if the suitcase wasn't there. Maybe Hick is a regular Dick Van Dyke coming home to Laura Petrie, falling over an ottoman. Maybe he would have tripped over that wayward thread on the arm of the couch. Who's to know?

Anyhoo...I was kind of worried about Hick. Hick was kind of worried about the bananas. Let the record show that he picked them up off the floor and put them back in his bowl.

The suitcase is still on the couch.