Life's a mess, clean it up.

Just as I'd finished unloading the car after a long, long day selling at the Sunday Market, the phone rang: my nephew has been taken to Emerg with a broken leg.

He's fallen out of a tree.

I better clear something up first: said nephew is forty-something and I don't know what he was doing in a tree. His mind is a dark and scary place and I don't want to go there.

So Emerg at TGH was good and the staff good and the wait fairly uneventful except for the drunk in the waiting room trying to sleep it off on a bed cobbled together from three or four chairs and benches who kept screaming for his sandwiches. Apparently he was hungry and felt that room service was not up to his exacting standards. I agreed with him and complained bitterly that good help was indeed hard to find. And keep. And the menu limited by the chef's adamant unwillingness to be bold.

After the x-rays revealed a broken heel (as well as some other stuff) an appointment was made two days hence for a visit to the Fracture Clinic where the temp splint would be removed and a proper cast laid on. They sold him a pair of crutches and waved "buh-bye". Did I mentioned the other leg was injured as well? Nothing serious, it just hurt to walk on it. Even with the morphine and percocet. So here's the question?

How do you use crutches when you don't have a leg to stand on?

We managed to get him into the car and the Security Team at his apartment building was kind enough to carry him (really!) up the stairs, through the double doors, into the elevator and up to his apartment through his door down the hallway and onto his futon. This was a Laurel and Hardy team by the way. Yep. slight and small Laurel did the heavy lifting while Hardy the larger more muscular of the two held the doors open and piloted the elevator. Just like in the movies. And who said art doesn't imitate life. And if I'd written the scene in a script everyone would scream (say it with me now): cliché! Now, nephew's studio apartment is full of stuff. Bric-a-brac. A warren of crated cubbyholes filled with computer bits and the lengths of cables connecting them; with stereo equipment and the lengths of cables connecting them; assorted large speakers and the lengths of cable connecting them. Did I mention there's all this cable lying around on the floor? Here's the dilemma? How does he get around until the good leg stops hurting enough to use to support the other, presumably bad, leg so he can use his crutches?

Of course if he takes enough drugs, the pain will go away but I doubt that he'd be able to stand up let alone manipulate the two sticks nesting in his armpits.

What about a wheelchair, you ask. He wouldn't be able to navigate a wheelchair through that clutter. Rick Hansen wouldn't be able to navigate a wheelchair through that clutter.

Finally we got back to our place. And I looked at our hallways. And I thought whoa! Every dealer I know lives like this. Boxes piled everywhere. Stuff just bought to be sorted, cleaned and priced; boxes from a show just finished, waiting to go back to a designated storage area, assuming of course, one has off-premises storage even if it's the back shed or mom's locker at the condo.

It's, you know, a dealer thing. We can't have anyone over for afternoon tea except other dealers, they're the only ones who understand. Everyone else just thinks we nuts. Or a sad and pathetic bunch justifiably worthy of both pity and scorn.



So after I said whoa I started to wonder: how are the paramedics going to get the stretcher with me on it through this labyrinth. Yikes!

I'm still wondering but I'm workin' on it.

And I swear to you now, as G-d is my witness, I'll never go hungry again! Sorry, got caught in the moment. But I really am going to clean up my act. Really.

Ricky Jay's character in David Mamet's film the Spanish Prisoner says: worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that may never come due.

And as far the nephew goes, I guess the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.