Wounded Trainers

I have seldom sat down to blog and had trouble thinking what to write. However, it has happened once or twice. More often than that, I've had an idea when I was away from my computer, and by the time I got there, the idea is gone. Some ideas come back, some don't. A few have come back again and again at inconvenient times and I've never written them. So, when I get an idea, I usually put enough information to remember it in a new post and save it as a draft. Sometimes I put just the title. Mistress' Hoopskirt can only be one thing.

So, I was making notes for several things I had thought about the other night. And then on Sunday I was looking at my drafts, and there was the title "Wounded Trainers" and I couldn't imagine what that was about. Usually my posts tend to be personal or political or profound or phunny, but there was nothing I had to say in any of those categories about Sigfried and Roy. Nor about ratty tennis shoes. And then I remembered. Of course . . .

I wrote about the first part of this inThe Great Snopes Hoax

Which reminded me of the time I was carrying two six packs of Pepsi from the car and fell off my shoes and broke the bottles and cut my hands and arm badly on the glass. Julie had to come home from work and drive me to the ER for 19 stitches in my forearm. . .

I also had bloody knees. The next day my business partner, Alison, and I were training for one of the county offices. I couldn't do it alone, since I needed to sit often and I could hardly use my hands so I wasn't going to be able to drive or write on the flip chart or even cut food at lunch. Alison was going to have a baby any day, so she couldn't go out and do it alone. Luckily that was the only training on the schedule for the day, so we could go together.

All day long we took turns presenting. One would train and one would sit and recover. When it was time to change, neither of us could get out of the chair unassisted -- her pregnancy and my scabbed and sore knees were in the way. She would hold on to my one uncut forearm, and together we would get one out of the chair and one into it. She was putting her hand to the small of her back in an ominous way, which had not only me but the entire class concerned. All went well, we got incredible evaluations (made it tempting to train in bandages all the time!) and a couple of the participants packed up Alison's car. As she drove away from the training site Alison asked me if Julie would be home by now, and when I answered that she would, Alison asked if I minded having Julie come and pick me up at the hospital, because she was in labor and didn't think she could get me home and drive herself to the hospital before the baby was born. Indeed, that baby was born about half an hour after she checked in.

And I'll bet that there aren't any male business partners with a story to top this one.