“Yes we all need someone we can bleed on…”

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of driving out to BFE to get my first glimpse at the new house of my (and Chief Oddball’s) best buddy, Reaper. Of course, since the house is a bit of a work-in-progress, this was no open house; I was expecting to be put to work somehow. Sure enough, once I got there, Reaper and his father were about to head out to Home Depot, and tasked me with removing light fixtures from the exterior of the house. I finished that up rather quickly, then sat around and waited in the sparsely-furnished house for Reaper and his father to get back. While I waited, Reaper’s fiancee arrived, and quickly we began to clean up the yard a bit; amongst the garbage we found outside was:

• A shoe
• A whole bunch of aluminum cans (including two which seem to had exploded)
• A tampon applicator
• Lots of discarded cigarette wrappers
• Lots of discarded dipping sauces from Burger King and McDonald’s
• Electrical cords
• Some other stuff you probably don’t care about

As we picked up trash, Reaper and his father returned from the hardware store; one of the things they picked up was a new water heating unit to install in Reaper’s basement, as the pre-existing one was garbage. Since Reaper and I were the big, strapping men, we got to haul the thing into the basement (luckily, the house is built into the side of a slope, so there’s a sliding door above ground we were able to take it through). As we set the heating unit down, I noticed the electrical control box for the house’s security system attached to the side of the stairwell that led upstairs - “Somebody could hit their head on that,” I noted to myself. A further note: the water heater itself was situated alongside the same wall as the staircase leading upstairs. This very well may play a part later in the story.

Back outside, Reaper and his father installed the new light fixtures in place of the ones I had taken down (which included some electrical hijinks along the way). Once that was done, it was time to tackle the water heater. Reaper and I made a quick trip back out to Home Depot to pick up a few things (and apparently inconvenience one of the clerks there, who actually had to - gasp! - check the price on something for us; she acted like we’d just asked her to haul the contents of the store out to our car by herself), after which installation of the water heater began.

Reaper’s father handled the bulk of the work as I assisted with illuminating areas with a flashlight, or wiping spots clean of crappy, dirty water (because I’m rather incompetent when it comes to hardware and electrical stuff). Soon our roll of paper towels began to run low, and Reaper’s father asked me to get more. I turned to go upstairs…

BOOM.

Reaper thought his fiancee dropped something upstairs. Reaper’s fiancee had no idea what the sound was. I’m not sure what Reaper’s father thought the sound was. I, however, knew exactly what the sound was - I had just run head-first into the security system’s electrical box. I immediately dropped to the floor, discarding my eyeglasses in the process (funny how, despite the fact I was in immense pain, my first thought was to not splash blood on my glasses); I remember opening my eyes and seeing blood pouring out onto my hand, and thinking that was a whole lot of blood…my blood. Beyond that, it’s rather fuzzy - I was given a towel (or something) to press against my head, and I was turned over on my back. The floor was very cold (as it’s concrete), so I began to shiver, which worried Reaper and his father momentarily as they wondered if I was going into shock. They then realized the floor was cold, and they led me back upstairs - by this time I started to get my bearings (and had stopped hyperventilating) so I was able to walk under my own power to the ground floor, where I was led to a folding chair (amusingly, as I sat down and laid my head back, I smacked the back of my head on the wall - d’oh).

Reaper’s fiancee is a nurse, but in a komedic twist, she didn’t have her first-aid kit in her car, so she had to drive to the nearest Walgreen’s to get some stuff for my cut - by the time she got back I was already cracking jokes about painting Reaper’s walls with my blood or how this was my Rube Goldberg-esque way to get paper towels to the basement (as they had brought all the paper towels to the basement for me to use as I gushed blood onto the floor), so everyone knew I was okay. Reaper’s fiancee arrived back home a little bit later and cleaned me up and bandaged the cut - crisis averted. Then I was even treated to dinner by Reaper and his fiancee afterwards (well, after Reaper and his father finished installing the water heater - I was forbidden from going back into the basement). Woo!

So now I’ve got a nice gash smack dab on my hairline (which makes it really fun to try and clean and bandage, not to mention combing my hair) about half-an-inch wide or so; in another odd occurrence, my gash almost spells out Reaper’s initials - I told him this was somehow a calculated stalker-esque action by me.

Hilariously, the cut doesn’t even hurt now - but what does hurt is a little area on one of my fingers where I skinned myself taking down one of the outdoor light fixtures. How does that work?