Life in the Emergency Room

The local hospitals know my father on a first name basis. “Hi, Ron, what did you do this time?” is a popular phrase heard in every Emergency Room in the Hudson Valley. He’s there so often they need to name a wing after him from all the business he’s provided them over the years. What’s the problem? He’s either accident prone or just really bad at starting a career of suicide attempts.
Starting from my childhood I can count the years on what accidents Dad had. When the teacher asked me to recite the alphabet I’d say, “E-R”. It started when he was showing me how NOT to open a car’s radiator after it was running for awhile. “See this, Carol? Don’t ever open the radiator cap when it’s hot -- watch what happens.” You guessed it - facial burns that rivaled the Joker’s. That was my first experience in the ER. There was the time he was showing me how to ski down the slopes of VT. “Now it’s very important to watch where you’re going, Carol, so you don’t hit a treeeeee”. He looked like a cartoon character with his face smashed into that tree, arms and legs wrapped around it and various ski equipment strewn about the mountain. I just shook my head and wondered how he survived hitting a tree and Sonny Bono didn’t – they’re both the same size I thought.
Chainsaws! There’s a hot button. I can’t tell you how many body parts he’s cut up with a chainsaw over the years. Dr. Frankenstein must be his doctor one would think with all the sewn up appendages he has. As an adult whenever I hear the sound of one I immediately begin to twitch as if I have cerebal palsy. When I got my drivers permit he made sure I got full use out of it driving him to the hospital. “Hi Carol, can you drive on over here I need your help.” “Sure, Dad, let me finish eating my sandwich and I’ll be there in a half hour.” “You better come now because I’m lying under a tree.” WHAT??!!” “Yeah, the chainsaw got away on me and I sliced my arm just about off but I can’t tell because the tree fell on me so I’m a bit stuck underneath it right now. It’s a good thing the cell phone was in my other pocket,” he laughs while bleeding to death. Sixteen years old and I swore like a trucker at him all the way to the hospital as he faintly kept telling me to slow down or I’d get a ticket. Can you believe that?!
This man has totaled more cars than at the Derby Raceway. Insurance companies lock their doors when they seem him coming. The kicker is that he can roll the best trucks several times over and STILL walk away from them. He’s driven one off a cliff, down a slope, landed vertically on a set of railroad tracks and made it out of the cab before the train plowed through it. Stunt men just look at him and shake their heads. Absolutely amazing! Now that he’s in his sixties, retired, and recuperating from 2 heart attacks back-to-back in July I figured his days of being Evil Knieval were over. Nope. Eating my breakfast and staring out the window at the rain last week I suddenly see his body fall from the sky. Bastard fell off the roof. He was working on the addition in the rain and fell off the roof and into the hole of cinder blocks. I told my mother to just pour the concrete foundation on top of him and be done with it. They say cat’s have nine lives but watching this episode I swear I saw a mother cat telling her young, “See that guy – he’s got 15 lives and counting.”