The tale of the tailgate mishap

It was early summer. The sun was shining brightly. A light breeze was wafting through the trees, and they were casting lacy patterns onto to the freshly mown grass. I had been working in my flower garden, weeding, breaking up perennials and re-planting them, and was in the process of planting some annual seeds.

I stopped to take a little break, Bob had made me a little bench from some sawed off logs. It was quite nice just sitting there thinking about what a lovely day it was. In my golden years, I find this to be very relaxing.

As I sat there, I got to thinking maybe we needed some compost. We burn wood in the winter and I always put the wood ashes on my flower garden. Also, we have a small composter and so all of our garbage, grass clippings, leaves and all sorts of things, end up in my garden. As I looked around I thought, yep, that's what we need.

I found Bob and explained to him that we hadn't put a load of good ole compost on my garden for two or three years, and didn't he think it was about time we did? He said, "Is 'we' the two of us?"

I replied, "Well, yes, that was who I had in mind."

He said, "And when did you plan on doing this?"

I said "Well, how 'bout now? It's as good a time as any."

I could see that he had other things on his mind that he would rather do, but he said he guessed we could do it now. We got the trailer hooked up to the car. Well, Bob did most of it. We went into Pittsville and got a nice big load of compost, and headed home. We proceeded to unload it in a pile out by my garden.

After we finished unloading, Bob swept out the trailer, I grabbed the tailgate and as I was getting it into the groove, it slipped out of my hands and slid down so fast it almost made my head swim. And wouldn't you know, my foot was in the way and it landed with a whomp right on my big toe. All of you who know me, know that I don't swear. But it hurt so bad, I said it, OH, FUDGE. I couldn't help it, tears were running down my cheeks.

Bob helped me as I very slowly hopped on one foot over to the front porch steps, I sat down and stared at my throbbing toe. I was scared to take off my shoe and look. It appeared to look flatter than a pancake. I sat for most of an hour, before getting up enough courage to slip off my shoe. Yep, it was beginning to turn black and blue and flatter than a flitter.

I went into the house and cut off a big piece of my Aloe Vera plant and went back out on the porch and began to very liberally rub it with the Aloe Vera.

I did this for most of an hour, and by then the swelling had gone down and actually wasn't turning black and blue. The pain was gone and I could get around nicely.

I wore "toes out" shoes for about a week, and used my Aloe Vera two or three times a day, and believe it or not, I didn't even lose my big toe nail. The moral of the story: Stay away from tailgates.