7 October 2003, 1:21 peeyem
I am a freak magnet.
Sunday afternoon we had a match at Piedmont Park. Those of you who live in Atlanta know that Piedmont Park is purportedly Atlanta's Backyard. As Atlanta's Backyard, Piedmont Park is generally full of a very diverse group of individuals, doing a very diverse array of things (not the least of which is apparently having sex all over the place, if the proliferation of condom wrappers is any indicator) – this is in no way intended as a remark on what I do or do not do in my backyard, by the way.
Anyway.
I went around the courts and the clubhouse to go to the ladies room, and there was a wild-eyed woman in the lobby holding one hand in a wad of paper towels and clutching a leash in the other. She was repeating, over and over in a somewhat autistic fashion, "Please call 911. Please call 911. Please call 911." There were two park employees standing there looking at her and I assumed that 1) she might be a crank, and 2) they were handling the situation. You know what happens when we assume. I trotted on into the ladies room, and when I came out, there was a not inconsiderable amount of blood soaking through the paper towels and she was still asking them to call 911.
As I am a take-charge kind of woman with an oddly soothing (no, really) personality, I asked her to sit, please. She sat down and I asked what happened. She pulled her finger out of a styrofoam cup of ice and said, "My dog bit my finger. Off." I gasped for a second, as I was not expecting to see a severed finger before my eyes. I pointed to the dog and said, "This dog right here?" "Yes," she said, "but his rabies shots are up to date."
Let me interrupt myself here to say that I think it's a fine thing to be a responsible pet owner, but rabies or no, I don't want to lose a digit to my own damn dog.
The park employees were still standing around looking flummoxed, so I very clearly said, "Please call 911 This Instant," and then asked her if the finger was in the cup or in the dog. She didn't know where the finger was, and she was still asking for someone to call 911.
In a moment of remarkable charity, I volunteered Brenda's nurse practitioner services and left them there waiting for the ambulance. Brenda went up there and reported that someone had gone outside and found the finger, but that they wouldn't put it back, since it was just the fatty end of the finger and not the bone.
In other news from Sunday, I am ashamed of myself, so very ashamed of myself, for my behavior during my match. I am more or less inured to guilt, but I have a heaping helping of seflo and shame. I behaved like an ass in response to other ass-like behavior, when normally I would have let it go, kept my cool, stayed on the high road.
Finally, go here.
Living
in the
Past?
2003
2002
