With a title like that you're probably asking what this could possibly have to do with art. Well, it's not much other than it occured while I was attempting to connect my large format printer to our network. In addition to it demonstrating a very important safety lesson, it is also quite comical.
Over the past week I finally got everything in my grandmother's house cleaned and had finally shifted my focus back to art creation, which occasionally requires the printing of reference photos.
The incident occured right as I thought I had finally gotten the printer-network connection to work and was trying to make a test print. Immediately after I clicked the final "Print" button I realized that I had forgotten to switch the media type from the expensive roll paper to normal letter paper. I should have also realized that there was no immediacy to having to cancel it since the printer status monitor didn't come up, but that fact instead made me react with more haste since I figured I'd have to cancel the print at the printer itself.
So I bolted out the house, ran across the back yard and entered my parent's house next door. My first two steps were on the entryway rugs but my third step planted on my right foot while somewhat shifting to the right to make a turn, and it totally slid out causing me to launch forward in a diving belly-flop motion. Thanks to my years of falling experience through gymnastics, BMX, and being a general fool, I was able to "safely" brace my fall on my forearms and not my palms or face.
The launching belly-flop alone would have been sweet enough, but there were some key details which occured mid-flight that made this bust truly epic. My launch path threaded the needle between an old wooden rocking chair and an ironing board. Apparently I strayed too close to the ironing board, possible seaking a brace point, and my right forearm grazed the edge resulting in an 8 inch long scrape. The forearm-ironing board contact was just enough to cause the board to tilt at about a 45 degree angle. This tilt resulted in the iron slowly sliding off in just enough time to land on the back of my left leg. Somehow my mom's brand new laptop, which was also on the ironing board, was spared.
Still bent on my print cancel mission, I got up and made it to the printer only to find my efforts were totally unnecessary. Sadly, this wasn't the first time that day that I had run between the houses and had already noted to myself that running in my house slippers wasn't the safest method of locomotion, but sometimes one has to learn the hard way. Damage report: 8 inch scrape on right forearm, nickel sized raspberry on right knee, inch long bruise on left shin, minor bruising to top of left foot, some minor pain in second toe on left foot, and possibly broken ironing board. Somehow the iron falling on my leg caused no damage to the back of my calf.
In the end, I never was able to get the printer connected to the network and will just have to wait until I can move it over here and connect to it directly to use it. Like my "Don't play with matches" third degree burn of a few years ago, this adds another real lesson to an old childhood rule, this one being "No running in the house."
No comments:
Post a Comment