Ladder's looking like a good idea

If you told me New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady would throw for 500 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions in Sunday’s Super Bowl, I’d have told you to clear some space for a sixth Lombardi Trophy in Foxboro, Massachusetts.

If you told me I’d suffer a bad injury on Super Bowl Sunday, I’d have laughed in your face. What, is some salsa going to splash up into my eyeball?

It turns out you can never be too sure. Just be glad I’m not limping.

I guess this story started well before Sunday — probably 21 months ago, when I first cut cable television. For the price of the cable bill, I could cover three different streaming services and still have money left to occasionally buy a movie or TV series digitally.

Now, most of my network habits depend on my indoor antenna because I lack the ladder and the desire to install an antenna on the roof. I found a nice little corner spot that got FOX and CBS just fine for high-definition football broadcasts.

The problem? The Super Bowl was on NBC this year, meaning I had to move the antenna elsewhere to get the signal I wanted.

I looked for a high spot on the other wall, and used a chair because I still lack the ladder. When the chair wasn’t stable, I got footing on the edge of my end table.

It turned out it wasn’t the edge of the table, but the center. And it turns out my end table has a glass top. Well, it had a glass top after my foot literally weighed in on my poor planning.

As I went down at the speed of gravity, my mind processed at the speed of light. Here comes the Bandage Corollary. It’s a cousin of Murphy’s Law, that dictates anything that can go wrong will go wrong. The Sweatpants Corollary states that whenever you dress down embarrassingly, you will run into the one person you don’t want seeing you dressed down. The Bandage Corollary dictates when you get cut somewhere, you will have every bandage except that one that fits the unusual location and length of the wound your accident created.

After the initial shock of the fall wore off, I hopped with my unsliced foot into the bathroom for the bandage collection. Corollary schmorollary, I found a wide bandage that fit the scratch just right, and I had enough of them to withstand the heavy initial bleeding.

Before I applied bandage two, I went to work cleaning up the remains of the end table that was taking up too much space anyway. With each shard of glass, I thought myself luckier and luckier this landed me in the bathroom and not the emergency room.

The antenna never found a new home, but I got to watch the game. NBC Sports was streaming the game online for free. My foot says to my brain, “NOW he tells me.”

The Patriots lost, and I got injured. The cut isn’t gone, but it has healed to the point the daily bandage has no evidence of blood.

The only thing left to do is go out and replenish the bandage supply.

And maybe clear some space for a ladder.

Kevin Wilson is managing editor of The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at: [email protected]