The Profound Importance of Context

Feb 18, 2008 - 16:39 PM PST

How many times have you seen the following on TV? Friend A and Friend B are moving a piece of furniture - the bed, we'll say - and Friend A trips, falls on top of Friend B, and they topple onto the bed. Friend C enters the room and assumes he's caught the two in flagrante delicto. Through much mistaken intent, profound hilarity thus ensues. End of joke. 'Tis like Hamlet. For writers, this sort of compromising situation (which I have named a "compromising situation" is like Acme-brand TNT. Right off, you get a big explosion... and then you're left with nothing except a singed coyote and another nineteen minutes of uproarious hijinks. Cue the long, silent fall off the edge of a cliff. Poof.

Usually when this sort of thing crops up in film or on television, I skedaddle. However, in my own life, it's freakin' sweet. Rather, it would have been if someone had walked in and had seen what I was doing. Instead, I had a moment in which I stepped back from myself, realized how very funny that very moment was, and cracked myself up for a good ten minutes.

Here's what happened:

I'm looking after the folks' dogs while they're in Guatemala visiting the Incas, or the Mayas, or the Sun Goddess, or something. I didn't get full details. I'm sure they'll end up bringing back a load of culturally significant items that will get stacked up and stuffed in a closet somewhere after we've all agreed how useful they are and my, aren't those developing countries full of unique ideas like frying certain different parts of the goat?

The dogs are Lilly (9, Dachshund, 5 lbs at most) and Wrigley (11 months, Great Dane, approx. 100 lbs.) and part of my duties this week are to get their nails trimmed, a task which I have performed efficiently in the past. In fact, I'd never made a mistake, which turned out to be, well, a mistake. Wrigley is easy. Her toes are huge, her nails clear, she doesn't get skittish at all when it's done. The clear nails are key - you can easily see the quick through the cuticle, so you can avoid nipping it and making the dog bleed. You don't want to make the dog bleed, by the way.

Lilly is "different." There's a touch of short bus about her. Try to hold her down and she starts bucking like a champion bull. If I could find a rodeo for nine-inch-tall cowboys, I'd make a million. Or whatever the nine-inch equivalent of a million is. Not a single wittle wrangler could ever ride her for a full eight seconds, which is the length you have to ride a bull in order to get a score. Yes, I know a little bit about bull riding. I won't ever do it, I know that. Unless I'm the bull. And Gabrielle Union is the cowboy. And it's a new event in which you ride the bull in a different and very specific way. And I'm not, in fact, a bull. The rope rope can stay, though. And the rodeo clowns.

Plus, Lilly's nails are black, so you can't really see the quick. And she's tiny. Well, in all my past experience clipping nails, I've never once hit the quick and made the dog bleed.

However, this time, I hit the quick and I made the dog bleed. And oh boy did it bleed, like the Ganges during monsoon season. It's not terribly serious - it's not like I lopped off a toe. It just bleeds a lot, like a cut on the head. Even though her foot is now soaking in her own blood, she doesn't seem to be in a great deal of pain. This is easy to surmise because, as I got up to grab a paper towel, she leapt to the floor and began to run, full-bore-I-am-READY-to-play running. And the more I gave chase, tried to grab her back up to wrap her foot, stop the bleeding, the more she ran around, all over the kitchen and the den and the laundry room, leaving bloody little footprints everywhere she went, plain enough to track her course like the kid from the Family Circus comic strips. Eventually she skittered to a stop in a corner, tail wagging, and I snatched her up, still kicking like a longhorn, and stuffed her foot into a crumpled paper towel.

During the next few minutes, this impish demon hound squirmed and wiggled and wormed and squiggled in my arms while I tried in vain to keep an increasingly crimson-colored paper towel wrapped around her foot. Allow me to mention at this point that I was wearing surgical scrubs that evening, and that said scrubs were now spotted with surprisingly large and dark bloody smears, like I'd been performing meatball surgery in the 4077th. Where are all the hot nurses when you need them?*

At this point I'm thinking I've got this in the bag. Hold her down, wait until the bleeding stops, clean up all the footprints. (Suppose someone just heard me say the previous sentence aloud. See!?! This stuff just writes itself. It's no different than "...that's what she said" jokes, or, as we do in my family, "...said the actress to the bishop" jokes.) Unfortunately, the bleeding isn't stopping. We're at a steady ooze. Suddenly I've got the shining, and I can see ahead to Saturday, when I go the pick my folks up at the airport: "Hey, mom and dad, how was your flight oh that's a nice Mayan fertility necklace oh i see you got some sun your dog bled to death how was the monastery you visited I notice you're not saying anything yes I'll move my things out do you know if they're hiring at the dress barn?"

Surely there's some way to stop the bleeding. I've got a pot of soup about to boil on the stove! So I lock her in the laundry room, which is small and has linoleum floors. At least I can keep any further footprints to a confined, easily-cleaned area. On the internet, I find a list of things you can do to stop a dog's toenail bleeding if you've cut it too short. Cauterize it with a professional nail-trimming tool. That's out. Styptic pencil. WTF? Quick Stop Powder. Negative. I was not a Boy Scout. I am not prepared.

BUT - down at the bottom, a lifeline. "In the absence of these solutions, flour or corn starch may be applied to the bleeding nail." In my haste, I read this as "flour AND corn starch" and rush off into the kitchen, grab the flour and corn starch and mix about a quarter-cup each together in a small cup, not stopping to think that surely, for my purposes, either of these would be alright on their own in helping a clot form. I go back towards the laundry room, flour and corn starch mixture in hand, and see the door knocking a bit against the frame as Lilly jumps up against it, ready to come out. Opening the door, the Wrigley comes up from behind me and bumps me right in the back of the knee. Down goes Frazier. Lilly darts around me and back towards the kitchen. The area she's been jumping about looks like the aftermath of a tiny little siege, a bloody cross-hatching of footprints on the floor and a small ways up the door.

I stalk back to the kitchen after locking Wrigley in the laundry room and find Lilly just now realizing how very interesting it is that there's blood on the floor. I pick her up and dunk her whole bloody foot into the flour and corn starch.

It is at this point, dear reader, that I had my moment of utter hilarity, as though I'd stepped out of time and space and was looking down from the heavens.

There is a pot of vegetable soup simmering on a stove. The kitchen floor is dotted with bloody footprints, as though there has been a struggle. Next to the stove stands a man with blood-smeared scrubs, a struggling, bleeding dog in one hand, and what I now realize is A CUP OF BATTER in the other.

I'd have given my big toe if David Schwimmer could have walked through the door at that moment and said, "Chicken-fried-dachshund?!? NOOOOOOOOO!!" and fainted.


* * * *


Instead, my frustration with the whole situation immediately subsided and I began to chuckle, and then to laugh, and then to cackle unequivocally. I'm sure anyone walking by outside the house probably thought I was a loony.

Lilly's fine, by the way, no sweat.** Unfortunately, I forgot to let Wrigley out of the laundry room and she electrocuted herself chewing on the dryer cable.








*Iraq.
**Dogs don't sweat. I'm clever.