A Turd To Be Reckoned With

On my way upstairs for the night (or, “up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire,” as the Brits would have it) and I spot a small piece of landscape bark on the landing. I nudge it with my foot and realize my first impression was erroneous: it’s too rounded to be bark, it’s too dense, and I live with kobolds.

I’m too lazy to go fetch a kleenex for the job, so after a moment’s hesitation during which I’m pretty sure I’m gonna fully leave the turd lie, I finally pick the thing up with my bare hands, run it to a toidy and flush it. Washwashwashwash hands.

For some of you, maybe this is nothing. For others, maybe it’s unthinkably gross. For me, I’ve had worse. And I’ve learned the direct approach is the safest. One time I was scooping Maimer’s litterbox and there was a little lone poo on the floor next to the box. After chasing it around a bit with the scoop, I finally pinned it against the box side and tried to wiggle the scoop under it. It was a stalemate for about eight seconds (a liftime in turd terms), which was broken when the scoop slipped, the poo broke free and BECAME AIRBORNE, arcing right past my face. My life flushed–I mean flashed–before my eyes. When I’d recovered from the shock, I scurried after the errant feces, snatched it up and tossed it in with its brothers. Bare hands.

See, bare hands are nothin’. It helps to have some perspective. If I’d been yawning, I coulda had that thing in my mouth.

Workman’s Comp in 12 Easy Steps… Library Edition!

This is the Workman’s Comp in 12 Easy Steps… Library Edition!

Step 1: If you don’t have one already, get a job in a library.

Step 2: At your (new) library job, injure yourself in a stupid way, say, by falling out of your shoe.

Step 3: Fill out a workman’s comp form.

Step 4: Find where they keep the workman’s comp forms, then complete Step Three.

Step 5: See a physician.

Step 6: Discover your regular doctor is unavailable because you put off the dreaded appointment until the weekend, when the only legitimate health professionals open are the emergency room and the walk-in “doc-in-the-box.”

Step 7: Complete Step Five by going to the damn doc-in-the-box.

Step 8: But first, shave your legs for once, you slob.

Step 9: Try not to catch SARS or the bird flu while waiting your turn behind the Phlegmy Bohemian Youth and the Harried Mother With A Billion Snot-Nosed Kids.

Step 10: Get chewed out by a “doctor” with unprofessionally casual wear, heavy accent and open contempt for American youth. See the errors of your ways in having stuck it out at work and postponed medical attention as well as having ever picked out, bought or worn shoes that are so easy to fall out of. Leave feeling less of a person in general.

Step 11: (Almost there!) Get saddled–I mean fitted with an ankle brace to be worn constantly for the next week. “Forget” to ask whether or not it must be worn even to bed. (What you don’t know you’re not responsible for.)

Step 12: Hobble around work for the next week, fishing for sympathy, which you garner in truckloads. (It’s the comp time that doesn’t appear forthcoming.) Try not to think about going back to the grumpy foreign doc-in-the-box at the end of the week.

You did it! Now don’t do it again.

So a guy walks into a bar… and says OUCH!

Sorry, that was corny. But appropriate for my current state of clumsiness. And I do have a story:

So I wake up in the middle of the night for a bathroom call, and when I look in the mirror, there’s blood on my nose. I’m like what the– I scrub at it. It’s a gash. Or at least a deep scratch. Now I’m feeling paranoid. How is it I’m getting cuts on my face in my sleep? Did I scratch myself? My nails are nonexistent. Did Maimer do it? But the little kobold’s just sleeping innocently at the foot of my bed. Did I fall asleep with paper and pencil again? I’m gonna lose an eye if I keep doing that.

Accepting the strange reality that I somehow sleepwalked face first into a cheese grater, I slap a bandaid across my nose and head back to bed through the pitch black of my room. I go to dive into bed and run face first into the Leaning Tower of Music and Reading Material that lives on my nightstand. This could have something to do with it, I’m thinking. I’m afflicted with life-threatening clumsiness! Combined with chronic disorganization, it’s amazing I’ve lived this long. So it’s still pitch black, I still have a bandaid on my nose, but now my face and hands are throbbing, I’m catching books, cds and papers as they slide every which way and the commotion has awakened Maimer who decides now’s a good time to maul me with love. I can’t see a thing, but she’s yapping and growl-purring, rubbing against my arms and biting my fingers as I hold desperately onto the crumbling remains of the Leaning Tower. When my Cowboy Bebop mix cds start hitting her, though, she starts to complain.

So if any of you are confused as to what kind of animal my kobold kompanion is really, it’s on purpose. If you’re not confused, then I’m not as clever as I thought (a distinct probability) or else you’ve met the real thing in real life (for those few of you who have, I’m sorry, she’s just like that). But if anybody’s confused as to what a kobold is, plain and simple, I can help you there. And I’ll do it with an acrostic!

Kowardly
Ontisocial
Bicious
Ogly
Lizard
Dogs

There! It’s like a kobold wrote it! Cuz they’re stupid, too. But I couldn’t fit that into the acrostic. Now, there’s some disagreement as to whether kobolds are reptilian or canine. (In Baldur’s Gate, I always thought they looked like organ grinder’s monkeys, with little red vests, going “oo-oo-ah” when I killed them.) But, since each side of the debate is spearheaded by the greatest geniuses of gaming (Wizards of the Coast say lizards, while Ninth Level Games and Dork Storm say dogs), I like to integrate both into my concept of kobolds. Plus I just like the sound of “lizard dogs.”

To see different visual concepts of kobolds, do a Google image search. You’ll find some gnome-looking things in there, too, since kobolds used to be mythical mine-dwelling spirits before Wizards of the Coast got a hold of them.

Wait! I can fit “stupid” in there! Kobolds are always plural! KOBOLDS! Kowardly Ontisocial Bicious Ogly Lizard Dogs that are also very Stupid!