Case of the Disappearing Leg – Reality Sometimes Hurts

I don’t think I will become a fan of America’s Funniest Home Videos. I only watched the first few minutes of one of the shows and thought, what is so funny about incidents and accidents where someone gets their feelings or their body hurt? What kind of person would take videos of those types of things and then send them off to a TV show? For that matter, why do people watch this kind of thing and then laugh?

Of course, I’m feeling a bit touchy about an incident that might have been funny if Charlie Chaplin had done it for a movie, but wasn’t so funny when it happened to me. Let me set up the scenario for you – we have a set of stairs at the back of our property. Two risers and a landing. They go nowhere, but the landing is a wonderful place to stand when I want a panoramic view of sunrises or sunsets. Yesterday morning’s sunrise was not one that held promise, but I had seen The Fox trying to rustle up breakfast in the field and when the fox finally settled down in a depression just beyond our fence, I thought I could sneak down to the viewing platform to get a better look at it.

The fox was not inclined to oblige me and departed very quickly. I decided to take a photo of something anyhow, so I climbed up the stairs onto the landing. I took one quick photo, then turned to take a picture in the opposite direction.

The broken board that allowed the deck to swallow my leg.

That is when one of the deck boards gave way. My right leg went with it, stopping only when the bulk of the upper part of my thigh matched the width of the gap in the decking. Twenty two inches of my leg  disappeared from view.

I sat there in stunned silence for a few seconds, then started to take inventory. My leg hurt in two places. My left hip and right shoulder were hurting too. The camera was still in my right hand, and both were resting on the deck. My hand felt okay, but I didn’t know if the thump had damaged the camera.

With a bit of effort I retrieved my leg and limped down the stairs, then back into the house to survey the damage. I’m a Hurtin’ Albertan!

Later in the day I  looked at my sunrise photo. It was as uninspired as I predicted. So I loaded it into Photoshop Elements and played with the Lighting Levels. Once the sky and cloud colours matched the colours of the bruise on the back of my thigh, I was satisfied.