No Good Deed Goes Unpunished - Tale #2

The Official Adopted Grandmother of Prince Elementary School was on a roll last Friday.  Kids were everywhere, and I had 348 stickers in a brand new book. 

We walked.  We sang.  We shook our fingers at the monkeys jumping on the bed and found ourselves shaking our heads and singing even louder. 

I sat on the cement and then on the grass; I must have tied two dozen shoe laces. 

(Yes, Big Cuter, they do know how to do it.  They just don't care.  Don't you remember your permanently knotted Air Jordans in the third grade?  You shoved your feet in, completely disregarding the dangling shoe strings.)

We walked some more, and in between each lap I put stickers on children's' faces.  After the last lap, I rested against a stanchion so that I wouldn't be knocked over and I proceeded to decorate the face of anyone who appeared before me.  By the time I left, all 348 stickers were gone.

I was tired and sweaty when I got into the car.  I drove home and parked and tried to take the key out of the ignition.  My thumb would not cooperate.  Instead, it made its presence known with a stab of pain that shot from the bottom joint through my wrist and up to my elbow. 

I shrieked. 

I leaned over and removed the key with my left hand, shrieked again when I tried to grab my water bottle, and didn't even try to open the trunk.  I brought my injured digit to TBG, with a frown that would not turn upside down. 

He wrapped it with a much too long and much too thick ace bandage, but it was the best we could do from the medicine cabinet.  Dinner was delivered pizza instead of the pasta I had planned; there was no moving that hand... the one without the opposable thumb.

Opposable thumbs are quite useful.  Just try removing the tabbed paper backing from a hearing aid battery the size of a pinky nail without one.  I did.  It wasn't pretty.

I pondered.  I wondered.  I was perplexed.  There was no moment of trauma.  I hadn't banged the gear shift lever nor pounded my hand on a table.  I reviewed my day... yoga... pilates.... walking... tying shoes... stickering faces..... and with that I shrieked again.

I'd mimicked the motion of removing the stickers from the pages and discovered the source of my injury... repetitive stress syndrome from 348 dabs of joy.

 

No good deed goes unpunished.