Memorial Day Weekend, 2005.

There was a stack of particle board leaning against the wall in the office, and I needed to get to the outlet behind it. “I’ll just ease it out away from the wall,” I said to myself.

Have you ever tried doing that with a stack of wood? It gets heavier the farther it gets from vertical. I think the pull of gravity must be stronger, closer to the ground. (Yes, you guessed it. I never took physics.) Anyway, everything was fine until the boards reached about a 45-degree angle. Suddenly, I couldn’t hold them up any longer, and I couldn’t push them back toward the wall, either. So I dropped them on my leg.

NovySan was outside. “What did you do?” he asked.

“Dropped a stack of particle board on my leg. But I’m okay! Really!”

“Go get an icepack,” he said.

“No, no. I’m fine.”

“You have a show tomorrow,” he said. And I did. So I got an icepack. NovySan is very wise. And the bruise really wasn’t so bad – it didn’t affect the muscle at all.

I can’t say that for the one I picked up a few days later, when I sat on the corner of a metal filing cabinet at work.

Yeah. That shit hurt.