I need a new story. The actual tale is not fitting for a man of my stately standing in the community.
It’s the Periorbital Hematoma. A black eye. The left one. It’s a doozy. I look like I just finished 15 rounds with Mike Tyson or an unstable ex-girlfriend. From Palmdale. I’m thinking of shopping Amazon or Bob’s Quality Pirate Supply & Emporium (also in Palmdale). I need a quality dark brown leather eyepatch. Accessorized thusly, I could tell people when they ask: “Hey. What happened to you?”
Off-handedly, I’d recount, “Saloon fight with bikers. The slimy barnacles are currently sleeping in Davy Jones’ locker, in the murky bottoms of Lake Piru.”
As former City o’ SClarita’s general manager, Ken Pulskamp, used to say, as his answer to every question: “Aaaaarrgghhh!!”
I bumped into a friend. She asked, “What happened to the other guy?”
Indignant, I replied: “Singular? ONE other guy? Not six, seven nor eight? Three or four dozen, if we’re talking Democrats?”
I fell. I was watering the South 40. The hose ruptured, exploding right darn off the spigot. We’re not on the stingy SCV Water. Our local waterworks mandates, due to Global Warming, that residents are only allowed a miserly 1.024 pints of H20 pressure every half-hour. SCV Water’s policy is designed to attract midgets to our formerly riparian valley because it doesn’t take long for them to rinse off in the shower.
At our homestead, when you open the valve to our generous underground reservoir, enough H20 blasts out to douse the Pacific Palisades Fire in 3.78 seconds. So. The hose breaks. I do the Johnny Weismueller breast stroke, swimming upstream on a wave not seen here since the Great St. Francis Dam Disaster of 1928. With the strength of Hercules, I manage to fight the cobra-like snake of a garden hose and turn off the valve. I’m standing a yard deep in mud, water and floating drowned animal carcasses. Battling an entire pack of swimming snakes, I managed to float to dry land. Once there, my ankle gets entangled in either a 50-foot long green water moccasin, or, the hose. Over I go. Breaking my fall, I use the least important part of my anatomy — my head. A knee, two hands, two wrists and the top rib right above my heart all chipped in to cushion my landing.
As I approach middle age, I’m always struck by how darn cute I am. Now, I look like the last five minutes of a horror movie where the monster gets blown up by Army guy bazookas and there’s a close-up of the monster’s head, melting in slow motion.
The worst part? The question that arises from moms and well-wishers — “You poor thing! What happened to you!?”
“Tripped on a garden hose …” does not seem like a swashbuckling answer. I am the last of a dying breed — The Manly Man, just oozing with the precious liquid of Toxic Masculinity. I need a better story, for the movie rights alone, other than a shrug and sheepish, “Ha-yuck, I’m clumsy.”
Dear Mr. SCV —
I’ve got one for you. How about you earned your near fatal head wound and black eye the size of a Texas T-bone, trying to stop SClarita City Councilperson, Bill Miranda, from chainsawing a 1,200-year-old oak and the 100-ton mighty flora fell on your little pumpkin head?
Bill, being from back east, of course was chopping down our official city tree to make the valley look more like Zorro Mamdani’s New York City, which, as you know, is an oakless bastion of communist monkey business.
Just trying to help.
— Your fan,
Mayor Laurene Weste
Head Nurse, Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital Black Eye Wing
Geez. Thank you, Laurene. Big fan of you, too! Your scenario paints my injury in a more noble and community service light.
I could say I got my Ring Magazine cover face after defending the honor of the SCV. I could claim I got into a fight at the irreputable Mayor Ernie Villegas’ Topless Saloon & Grille. It started when a squadron of illegal aliens were boasting that Fillmore’s homeless criminal illegal aliens were better than Santa Clarita’s homeless criminal illegal aliens.
There’s a lot of Where’d You Get The Shiner? alternative universe story lines available.
I could claim I saved the Canyon Theatre Guild’s school Marm (the fetching and talented Mrs. Ingrid Boydston) from a runaway burning Calistoga wagon, although, I happen to know the local fire department has had more than a few cautionary conversations with Mrs. B about piloting a madcap Calistoga wagon through town, engulfed in flames, without the proper permits.
Maybe I’ll just pick on a random, unsuspecting optometrist from Palmdale. I’ll jumpstart to my desktop and post a close-up selfie of me and my Homerian shiner on optometrist’s internet Yelp page. You know. The site with all those reviews and comments from grateful customers to acrimonious cranks? I’ll add the note:
“Cripes. And this guy has the NERVE to call himself a doctor! I’m giving him one star. I wish I could give less. Horrific experience in his office. Went in for a routine eye exam for contact lenses and look what he did to me … (•. – ( ”
I could lie. I could claim I landed a new job as the starting middle linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams. This discoloration is just the eye black all us NFL players use to reduce glare. When someone asks why is it only applied under the one eye, I’d just point out that, at my age, I’m getting forgetful.
Sigh and oh well. Look on the bright side. You know what they say in the Bible, Matthew 6:22. To paraphrase — let thine eye be singular …
Pick up “Naked Came the Novelist,” John Boston’s sequel to the international bestseller, “Naked Came the Sasquatch,” at JohnBoston-Books.com. A lifelong SCV resident with 119 major writing awards and nearly 12,000 columns, Boston is Earth history’s most prolific humorist and satirist.
