Last Friday, my courtroom was “dark” so I called in sick. I was dealing with nausea and couldn’t imagine having to float into a high-stress courtroom I wasn’t familiar with. The plan was to sleep in, but at 6am, Mr. W woke me up with an odd request. “Can you put Neosporin on my head? Part the hair line and try not to get any of the greasy stuff on my hair.” It turned out, when he was in the kitchen taking his plethora of pills, he’d dropped a pill on the floor. After bending to pick it up, he straighted quickly and managed to bang the top of his head into the sharp corner of the granite countertop. He said he left a chunk of scalp, blood and hair on the corner. Ewwww! I was afraid to see skull, and as I gingerly parted his hair, I told him he may need stitches. Luckily, I just saw some nearly congealed (ew) red stuff in a streak, and I applied Neosporin with a Q-tip. When he got home that night, he said he was sitting down at his desk when two coworkers came by to visit, and in looking down at him, they exclaimed about the top of his head. He explained the pill episode.

Yesterday, we tried to shred some items but the shredder was clogged with an envelope that had *almost* made it all the way through. The top of the envelope was just below the feed, visible but unreachable. Since the clogged paper wouldn’t budge, I couldn’t push any new paper down the feed to trigger the shred action. Taking the shredder off the basket and flipping it over, it’s obvious the shredded parts had fallen off the envelope so there was nothing to grasp to pull the remaining bit out of the teeth. Reversing the wheels got the shredding teeth to spin, but the stuck envelope wasn’t long enough to catch and be pushed through the mechanism. The portion of envelope was lodged pretty solidly in there. Mr. W decided to take over. He tried to use his laminated Blockbuster membership card (cuz who needs that anymore?) to push into the shredder feed and force the mechanism and envelope to shred, but the envelope wouldn’t allow the card to go in. He put it on reverse and saw it spinning uselessly. While it was going, he stuck his finger into the slot to try to reach the stuck envelope, causing me to yell, “DON’T STICK YOUR FINGER IN THERE!!” What was he thinking?! He then took the top of the shredder and went to the kitchen counter, trying to dislodge the envelope from the bottom. No go. Then he picked up a pruning knife. “You’re gonna use a KNIFE?!” He ignored me and started stab-pulling at the envelope from the top of the slot. He did this in quick frustrated movements, not with any sort of finesse, and I cringed, picturing the knife getting stuck and then with a hard pull, dislodging and flying into his face. A few seconds later, I watched the knife point, with the force of his pull, go straight into his other hand. He cursed, rinsed his hand in the sink, grabbed a napkin, then went back to the shredder with the knife and repeated his motions. I had to walk out and hide in the living room. Soon I heard more cussing and a “I did it AGAIN! Shit!” Great. My husband was stabbing himself to death in the kitchen, and I would have to explain to the paramedics later that he was fighting a shredder, not a prowler. There was more banging around in there, I think at one point I heard him go into the hall closet for tools, and the one time I peeked, he seemed to be stabbing with a screwdriver. I retreated. Soon, I heard the sound of mechanical spinning. Could it be…?
“Okay, it works now, but my hands look like I’ve been in a knife fight with someone.” It felt like a bittersweet victory, but I did shred something later just so his efforts wouldn’t have been for nothing.

I told him his coworkers are gonna think I’m abusive and kicking his ass at home. (And apparently I’m a really good fighter, too, cuz there’s not a scratch on me. Must be the past jujitsu training.) He threatened to TELL them all his injuries came from me. That made me kind of glad that I’d already posted on the social networking site, while I had been hiding out in the living room, about his caution-to-the-wind fight with the shredder. One of his coworkers had already acknowledged that post. He could tell them whatever he wants, the truth is already out. Ha!
…or MAYBE, I’m just putting “my” truth out there first to set the groundwork for my actual abuse. Hmm. The world may never know.