HLDA SNEAK-PEEK #2: chapter one "LOVE OF THE DOG"

LOVE OF THE DOG

Without a care in the world.

These are words that describe me as I lean back into a particularly warm square foot of my yard, easing into the June sun. I have crosswords in hand and the smell of donuts nearby. My wife, Kaysie, is convincing a stranger to purchase a ten-year-old alarm clock set on a table in our driveway. It is early summer 2005, and I am basking.

Basking in the warmth of the weather, basking in the thought that the most soul-sucking parts of this God-forsaken garage sale are almost over, and basking in the thought that my dog is resting peacefully at my feet. Basking at the sheer joy of it all – of life, of this moment.

In three hours, all of that is going to change.

But, for the time being, I suckle a Krispy Kreme while Hero (the dog) licks my ankle. I have no earthly idea why the ankle. This is just the sort of thing that dogs choose to do. Their love is gross. Especially hers. Most assume my dog is a he because of the Die-Hardesque name. But she is not. She is a girl. No one believes this because she is big and dark and has a name that insinuates she has just given a smaller dog CPR. But she is a she nonetheless. This doesn’t mean that others don’t keep up the argument.

ME: She.
THEM: What? You mean he.
ME: Hero is not a he. Hero is a she.
THEM: But heroes are “he”s.
ME: Shakespeare freaking invented the name Hero and it was for a she.
THEM: Your dog’s named after Shakespeare?
ME: No. No. No. That would be a sissy thing to do. My dog is named after one of Shakespeare’s imaginary women.
THEM: I thought all the women in Shakespeare were played by men.
ME: Yes. All of them except my dog.
THEM: How can you be certain?
ME: Because this isn’t “The Crying Game.”
THEM: You should’ve named her “Lady.”
ME: She’s not a lady. She’s a dog. That would be like naming your grandmother “Buffalo.”
THEM: Are you saying my grandmother’s fat?
ME: Not at all. I’m saying that buffaloes are bad cooks and smell like hand sanitizer.
THEM: All I’m saying is that you should’ve given her a more feminine heroic name than just Hero.
ME: There are feminine names more heroic than Hero?
THEM: If you put a little thought into it.
ME: Okay wise guy. What would you have named her?
THEM: Sarah Connor.

It was mere hours ago that I was rousing myself from the eighty-seven minutes of slumber a husband gets the evening prior to a garage sale. Now, I am witnessing a subculture of Midwest Americana that I did not know existed. They are the morning-dwellers who hunt mercilessly for dime-priced tchotchkes no human has ever or will ever find use for.

Used batteries.
Books that have clearly fallen into the toilet.
Remote controls that don’t come with anything to control.
Headless Barbie.
One chopstick.

They purchase these items in Sam’s Club quantities. I believe we have sold three hundred coat hangers. I repeat: coat hangers. And at least eighty-seven of them had the little white cardboard tube at the bottom broken in half. I am having difficulty deciding which is more troubling: the fact that someone would need 300 more coat hangers, or the evidence that my clothing is hefty enough to damage 87 of them permanently.

I am not a fan of garage sales because, once bought, I consider items very personal. I do not want to purchase, or even browse, anything that an unknown person has man-handled in the privacy of their home. This is because, though items have a designated purpose, people are bizarre and they tend to use items for Undesignated purposes. That butterfly net may have captured a rabid hamster. That suit may have been soiled in front of the President. And yet, strangers are snapping up bathing suits, bed sheets, old mattresses, a plunger – and what could very well be the most personal item of all…

Mix-tapes.

I spent many years courting Kaysie with my uncanny mix-tape abilities. My music awareness is widespread and my collection is vast. I spend an unhealthy amount of thought considering not just what song I adore, but what song would sound both perfect and unexpected preceding and following that song. I have made her mix-tapes that covered the gamut from declaring my love to celebrating a road trip. From chilling out on a snowy day to anticipating morning sickness. It’s practically my love language. A twofer of Wilco and Beck is preceded by Lizz Wright and followed by the Love Boat theme and somehow this makes a day practically perfect in every way.

One of my favorite mixes ever was from 1994 (the year we were married). The track list went like this:

1. My Sharona (The Knack)
2. Brother (Toad the Wet Sprocket)
3. Cantaloop – Flip Fantasia (US3)
4. “The Brady Bunch” Greg soundbite
5. Evenflow (Pearl Jam)
6. Get Ready for This (Jock Jams)
7. Crazy (Seal)
8. Tempted (Squeeze)
9. Got No Shame (Brother Cane)
10. Maniac (Michael Sembello)
11. Sweetest Thing (U2)
12. Return to Innocence (Enigma)

...and so on.

She loved that tape. Every minute of it was constructed with care and love and each brief moment of anticipation regarding what song would come next was followed by the satisfying sense that the tape-mixer knew the listener inside and out.

Just like life should be.

And, unless I’m mistaken, we just sold that tape to the fellow walking away with our old headboard.

Wow. Hero is really going to town on my ankle. Perhaps it’s lunch. I cannot complain. I mean, I could – and I do. I do complain about the dog. I don’t know why. She adores me and lives only to comfort me. As a matter of fact, I expect that her life would be quite meaningless without the constant need to coddle me. She has the loyalty of a concubine and absolutely no respect for personal space. Her joy comes only from providing me joy. And I don’t even have to return the favor all that much.

I like this.

Hero did not begin life as my dog. She originally belonged to my brother-in-law. A beautiful black labrador / rottweiler mix (the dog, not the brother-in-law), she was his lone company in some vital years. He had trained Hero from a puppy – running her up Colorado mountain trails, keeping her in shape and refining her into a regal specimen of dogness. When he moved his family to a smaller space in Boston, Hero was passed on to my household, and as I was the only one in the house willing to handle and dispose of feces, my brother-in-law’s Hero became mine. Only, I didn’t have to pay the price for her love. That check had already been written.

Certainly her affection for me is reciprocated, but it is not challenging to do so because Hero has become quite old. When she first joined our household, I ran her and walked her and threw the tennis ball back-and-forth, but time passed and she can no longer move as quickly as me. This truly redefines slow. My brother-in-law owned Hero in the days of sprinting up the hill while I own her in the days of licking whatever is closest.

So, right this moment – the sun, the breeze, the dog – I feel complete.

Well – only partially complete.

For a while now, something has been missing. Or, no – something has lingered. Like an eraser dangling from a string over my life, constantly whisping away the remnants of significant words that might have otherwise pressed to my paper. I cannot fold my fingers around things. I cannot absorb. I almost reach epiphany repeatedly only to have something significant sift out. It is a strange place.

It is important to me that I love those around me – that I take care of them, but lately I have felt my love slipping – as if it is taking no thought for what might be unique about the recipient. I would be quick to make one laugh or engage with an encouraging word, but it would never cross my mind to feed them, truly grieve with them, or help move their furniture. My love – my outreach – has become a sort of form letter: the same words and motions for everyone regardless of what they might, in fact, need. I have become junk mail.

These flaws are, of course, not evident to me at the moments they most should be. I want to be a good person. Most of the time, I dupe myself into believing that I actually am a good person. I long to lead others to Christ, but MAN, if I don’t have a dickens of a time landing all those good intentions when the decision of the moment comes down to either doing right or taking it easy. It’s one thing to break open the plastic egg of my life and extract the Silly Putty as I dissect my behavior in writing. It’s another to make goodness a habit, because goodness constantly argues with myselfness and myselfness always rips goodness a new one. So, instead, my epiphanies burst forth as I spew all of my flaws and inconsistencies on paper. Lucky you. I’m actually quite charming in person.

It begins to rain. This is a problem as hordes of clothing, books, and furniture are strewn about the driveway and yard unprotected. You would think I would have noticed the stormclouds coming as I am a planner. And yet, sometimes (often) the dark clouds roll in and cover my sunshine while I am otherwise preoccupied with that spaghetti smudge on my collar.

We scurry to cover what we can, shoving most back into the garage. It is clear that the call has been made. God has canceled our garage sale – which makes sense, because He doesn’t have a use for that remote control either.

There is a reference in the Bible to “the least of these.” It is a place where Jesus tells us that what we do to those that we least consider important in our lives is actually extremely important because it is as if we are doing those things to Jesus. This turns the whole idea of status on its head and is very stressful to people like myself. But, it took me a while to realize that this rule also applies to moments. The pieces of time that we sometimes deem least significant in our own scheme of things are often extremely significant from God’s perspective. In fact, the moments that we think are going to be important tend to be forgotten while a seemingly trivial occurrence may just become the apex of our half-life. In reflection, the most pivotal instances certainly didn’t look like they were about to be when they first hit. For instance, I deemed it extremely insignificant when Kaysie wanted the boxes of clothes put back into our attic. But, in the light of this entire story, it was extremely significant.

I did not want to return the clothing to the attic.

I know this because I had prearranged multiple excuses to keep me from having to do so. But, Kaysie wanted them separated and stored. This stems from the fact that Kaysie wants events maximized while I want them to finish. I am fueled by reflecting on something that is over while she is energized by things potentially never ending. And now, there is hot and rain and tired and all of the elements that should mandate my easier options.

But, no.

There is future money to be made by re-storing, re-discovering, re-arranging, re-pricing, and re-garage-selling these items that we just finished storing, discovering, arranging, pricing, and garage-selling. I do my best to argue this point. But, I lose.

MARK: You want me to what?
KAYSIE: Simply put those back in the attic.
MARK: You say “simply” as if you’re asking me to move a q-tip. Are we staring at the same twelve boxes?
KAYSIE: I know it’s a lot of work but I was up until 2:37 this morning pricing 300 coat hangers individually, so the least you can do is carry them up one flight of stairs.
MARK: I was up until 2:37 watching you price coat hangers while I paper-cut my finger on that box of Ho-Ho’s.
KAYSIE: Please just do this.
MARK: OR I could simply throw them in the van and dump them at the Salvation Army. Then, there would be less lifting and more salvations.
KAYSIE: You’re going to need salvation if you don’t put these boxes in the attic.
MARK: I think I just had a come-to-Jesus moment.

So, I will box all of the items back up and carry them upstairs into the sauna of our attic – even though I have a headache – even though I am angry because my mix tape has been sold to a stranger – and even though I have finger and back soreness.

Because I love my wife.

And because I am a husband.

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Kaysie and I met in the middle of one of those warehouse churches that look like they are desperately trying to avoid the appearance of a church. You’d be less surprised to discover a sale on a twelve-pack of salsa in that aisle than you would be to find a hymnal. It was ten o’clock at night and she was finishing up music practice. I had just driven the twelve hours in for a job and I was laying down on a row of seats (not pews – that would look like a church, wouldn’t it). My hair was as long as it has ever been, down to the small of my back – which for me was never exceptionally small. I was worn and certainly grumpy and somehow at that moment introduced to her.

She was not impressed.

In my defense: it was late, I smelled of Mazda, and I looked like Billy Ray Cyrus collapsing of exhaustion at the end of the official Achy Breaky Dance. It would not have been plausible to impress her. She reminds me of this even now, almost twelve years later as if to say “see how much you impressed me eventually,” or perhaps to say “you almost didn’t get me,” or possibly to say “you smell like that now.”

It wasn’t until we met the second time that things heated up.

And by “heated up,” I mean that she was not impressed the second time either.

I returned to lead a group of junior high students on a mission trip six months later only to discover – lo and behold – that I had been paired up with Kaysie to co-lead. It doesn’t take a Rorschach test to discover that the only thing I enjoy less than co-leading is co-leading with a stranger, so I was all-business and very little personality. By the time we loaded the bus for the all-night drive across the border, Kaysie was not my biggest fan.

This was a problem for me because in the Midwest, I was an actor and a stand-up comedian and I had what a desperate person might call fans. Not real ones. Just frightening ones. The sort of individuals that flail towards me at the mall in a sprint, skin-folds flapping like Old Glory. But their love was easy. In a crowded store, they might call my name out, which would please me because people who were not crazy might hear this and decide that they wanted to be my fans also. I highly recommend fans: tons of attention without any genuine knowing. And the adoration will continue even if you never see the individual again. No risk on your part – just tons of ego-stroking. You might even get your ankle licked.

So, it was difficult for me that Kaysie did not choose to be my fan. What had gotten into her? Didn’t she know all the important things I had done with my life? The jokes, for instance. Didn’t she know there were dozens of (potentially two) other girls who would kill for a date with the guy they thought I was, however incorrect the assumption? I was certainly put-out. Kaysie had been assigned as my co-leader, which meant that she should be, on some level, asking for my autograph. But, NO.

We arrive in Mexico after an exhausting all-night drive (these are becoming de facto in my life), but despite hunger and heavy eyelids, we decide to have a worship service in my favorite room on the planet.

The room is located at Hogar de Ninos Emmanuel, an orphanage at the top of one of the tallest hills in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The church built a meeting room at the tallest corner of the building, two of its walls’ windows facing the city of El Paso and the mountains. The room is always surrounded with the clang and clatter of the orphan children, laughing and living their days toward an unknown something. And, in the dark of night, you can look out those windows and see the lonely lights of two nations blending together. The intersection of sorrow and hope. It is a powerful place. And, whenever I have taken groups there, God meets us in that room.

Then again, maybe He is always there and He is waiting for us to come meet Him.

We turned down the lights and due to a lack of both an instrument and talent to play an instrument, worshipped with only our voices. I would love to say that the worship was anointed, but that would be avoiding the fact that few in the room knew the words to the songs. This encouraged an awkward combination of humming and mumbling with an occasional whispered, “yes Lord” to cover where one perhaps knew most of a chorus, but was missing a word. I, on the other hand, simply mouthed the names of farm produce. But, either way, it was the opposite of bombast. Still and quiet. We sang song after song until finally – a moment of silence.

Heavy silence. Like something was happening.

I, being the resident moron, decided to break the silence with a song. Couldn’t tell you why. Maybe I felt led by God. Maybe I felt the silence was awkward. Maybe just a bad taco. But nonetheless, I began: voice only, with one of my favorite refrains.

Oh God You are my God
and I will ever praise You
I will seek You in the morning
and I will learn to walk in Your ways

And as I sang, Kaysie heard an audible voice speak to her.

You first must understand that we are not those freaky-deaky “the spirit summoned a leopard and put him under my shirt so I must ROAR” sort of followers of Christ. Kaysie and I have seen so much and been disillusioned by so many people (including ourselves) in our walk towards Christ, that we would be very hesitant to jump to the conclusion that the voice in a head is definitely God. But, this was unmistakable. It was the farthest thing from her mind. She was simply standing there silently loving God – and He dropped the bomb.

"You can’t live without this man."

Wowzers. Me likey when He gets detailed. Tears start pouring down Kaysie’s face and I assume I have kept her awake too long against her will. She begins to wrestle down these thoughts with God as I send the group to bed. Kaysie remains silent. And we head off to our respective floors until morning.

The sun rises early on that high hill, but we rise ahead of it, beginning our first day of rebuilding portions of the orphanage with a time of prayer. We converge in the same great room and now look out over the horizon to see how these two cities intermingle in the daytime.

I am tired. The room is silent. I have my coffee. I am staring out the window at an ice cream truck selling propane to the tune of a musical horn playing La Cucaracha.

I sip my java and mouth something indiscernible that I hope by sheer will becomes a prayer for someone. And then suddenly…

The voice.

"You can’t live without this woman."

This concerns me as all the women in the room are twelve-years-old.
But I instantly know who is speaking – and who He is speaking of.
I freak out. I remain silent. I say nothing.

This marked our relationship for years. A deep knowing, a certainty that we are for one another. As a matter of fact, as the Juarez Legend of the Steeles grows, we revel in others’ fascination with us – their joy that our discovery of one another was so effortless – so pain-free. The world deems us made-for-each-other and to this day, I know that we were.

But, neither of us realized how long we rode that label before we attempted to truly understand one another. We loved others’ ideas of our perfection so much and for so long that it did not dawn on us that perhaps there was a great deal of work to be done. Perhaps the perfection was actually just a dodging of the issues.

I, of course, was willing to dodge. Because I needed a fan.

I wanted someone who believed she was created for me and that our union was some miraculous intervention of the Almighty. Something that epic would mean that I was special and that she was lucky. I would be validated and our union would be a symbol of happiness for those poor slobs who make up the rest of the world.

I wanted to be better than them.

And that was the real problem: our love was not as much rooted in a willingness to work through whatever hardships may come in the future as much as it was a goal to never have any hardships at all. We wanted our love to be safe. And so, we took the beginning of that love as a sign that all future days would be as equally orchestrated to perfection as the first one.

Our love, our affection, our story – it was envied. And I never realized how deeply I reveled in all of it. For the longest time, people had been fans of my comedy. But, now they were fans of my romance. It was like a good fantasy book they could curl up with and daydream about how their life might potentially wedge into something similar (but paling in comparison).

So, we played it up. The perfect proposal. The perfect wedding. The perfect couple. And then, real life began.

Nothing wrong with real life, of course. That is, unless you have already decided it would never happen to you.
Don’t get me wrong. I adore my wife, and I always have. But, something inside me thought marriage would be like the love of the dog.

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Hero hates this part of every evening when I close her inside the garage for the night, putting her away like Lincoln Logs to the closet. She wants to be near me, laying close enough to my feet to feel my warmth even though my attentions are elsewhere. It’s enough for her – and yet I don’t allow her to have those moments very often. Normally, I don’t close her in until late when the garage is a bit cooler, but tonight, I have to finish putting these boxes of clothes in the attic. I am attempting to finish out my duties for the day before I fulfill this last task because I am done.

I am exhausted. And not just because I only slept a short while last night.

I find myself waking constantly these days. Three or four times throughout the night. I have done this for years, but lately it is beginning to affect the way I see things. I get very little sleep and I am finding myself stressed, impatient, short-tempered. This is not like me.

For instance, right now.
I’m so tired, I’m practically furious.
I could just spit that after everything I’ve done today, I still have to heave these boxes that are evidently filled with cannonballs into storage.
I could paint myself a little more attractive but it would not be accurate. I am really steamed. I am in one of those “how dare the world expect so much of me” states. Ugh. I lift the next-to-last box of clothes. At least forty pounds. What the heck is in here? The cast of Maude? I turn to grab the other box, but my friend Matt has already chosen to assist.

Sheesh. Why does he do this? Matt is one of those jolly “let me get that for you” leprechaun people. He is always ALWAYS eager to help. I would say this impresses me, but before there is esteem, there is first nausea. Matt is so quick to be like Jesus and it ticks me off because I am NEVER quick to be like Jesus. It is real EFFORT for me. We’re talking prepare-for-several-days-and-write-reminders-on-my-knuckles effort. And then, after I do the thing I didn’t want to do that I felt Jesus wanted me to do – THEN, I feel guilty. As if the only reason I did it was to meet some unspoken criteria or perhaps seem more like Matt. I cannot fathom that selflessness can also be effortlessness because before I give a dollar to the guy panhandling for food, I first make certain I have enough left over for the new Fountains of Wayne CD.

But this time, Matt has chosen to help me. Who am I kidding? He’s been helping me all day. He unloaded the heaviest boxes from the attic this morning. He helped set up all the tables and price all the tchotchkes. He’s more than likely done more than I have. But, that doesn’t stop me from being hacked that I have the heavier of the two boxes. Sure, Matt has a bad back, but I had a bad back in COLLEGE – a nerve pinched in-between a slip disc in my vertebrae, causing me to walk with one leg a few inches shorter than the other for eighteen months. I would bobble back-and-forth, short-then-tall. I looked like Katie Couric holding hands with a Philistine.
The truth is. I do NOT want to put this box away. But, alas, these are my own clothes. My own responsibility.
My own weight to carry.

So, I open the attic door and heave the forty pounds up, blocking my sight as I work my way into the dry heat.

Hero begins howling from the garage.

She does this often. I have always assumed it was a call-and-response to an ambulance siren or perhaps dogs far away indiscernible to the human ear. Dogs can do that, right? Don’t they have a secret spy-hearing capability? It seems I read somewhere that if you whistle high enough, it will cause all the canines in your neighborhood to ram their heads repeatedly into the nearest dumpster.

In retrospect, I believe it is possible that her cries were loneliness. She lay there each night in the dark in solitude on a pillow that smelled of diesel fuel as we lay inside spooning under crisp cool sheets. She was relegated to a virtual prison for ten hours each evening and yet, the moment we opened that door in the morning, there she was – forgiving and ready to begin fresh – well, fresh except for her breath, which always smells of tuna melt sandwich though I don’t believe she’s ever actually eaten one.

Her love is in every way unconditional. Hero loves every single aspect of me and if for some reason on a particular day I smell especially rancid, it only causes her to sniff all the more. Not only does Hero love me just as I am, she actually nuzzles close to the dirty me every bit as much as the clean.
And I love her too, but not the same.

Because I can’t really love me like she does.
It just seems like too much work.

So, the howling continued night after night – and where Hero yearned for one of us to say “I hear you. I am coming,” instead we would yell from our bedcovers, “Shut up you stupid dog!” She began digging holes in the backyard out of boredom – searching for a way under the fence.

And we found ourselves fantasizing for at least one night without the constant howling, the trenches in the yard – the slobber on my ankle.

We began to daydream of a life without the dog.

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That trip to Mexico held some hidden doubt.

Kaysie and I had not spoken of it much, but there were many moments in the few days following when we were each separately uncertain if we had indeed heard God.

We were each in a unique place. We were wedged between the moment God spoke and the moment we would take action. Caught between revelation and obedience. This was an interesting predicament, because we had each spent the previous three years praying for exactly such a window.

We were the type who needed proof. Exact names. Clarification.
Neverlost.
And when God granted it, it scared the fool out of us.
This is important to dwell on, because it begins a pattern:
• We ask God to be specific.
• He is specific.
• Because He is so specific, we assume it could not possibly be Him.

What does this mean? It could only mean one thing: that our prayer lives were rooted in requesting what we thought we were supposed to be asking for – but we never really felt like we deserved to receive it.

It was a wake-up call to how guilt-ridden we each were. There was an unspoken deep need – an in-between. In-between the epiphany and the obedience, we expected there to be an additional moment.

The explanation.

We had always expected the big reveal by God Almighty to make perfect sense. We expected resolution before we had to act upon our life trajectory. And now, in the quiet drylands of Juarez, we are each left with a dangling participle of an instruction.

We had requested God to be clear, but we never expected the clarity to be so foggy.

It became apparent that the decision would need to be made on each of our parts even as the lump stuck in our throat. Again, we sought safe and this reality seemed daring.

As I drove back across the Mexico border having not yet verbalized my own God-moment to Kaysie, I knew that my out still existed. I had not hurt anyone yet. I could still walk away. The path towards her was filled with the unknown. Difficulties and negotiations. But the path away from her held only the loss that I had not yet gained. I knew that I could keep my emotions safe forever – not even by saying no – simply by saying nothing.

But, I had sensed what could be.

I sensed, even then, how God could become revelatory to each of us through the other. I saw our future children. I could taste the half-century of ups and downs, hurts and miracles. Being the greatest wound and the greatest joy the other would ever experience. It was daunting. It was not safe.

But it was full.

And so, in a rare moment of clarity, a few days later, I pulled Kaysie to me and whispered into her ear.

"Don’t be afraid of this."

And even then, we both knew that we were going to embrace the many wonderful things that our life would entail – even though there would be plenty of reason to be very very afraid.

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I snap back into reality. My mind has been wandering.
What was I doing?
Oh yes. The heat. The box of overweight oompa-loompas. The attic.

I begin to tightrope my way across the two-by-four that bridges the path from the attic entrance to the makeshift plywood floor we have installed for additional storage. I feel myself inches away from being through with this hellish day.

A creak.

My left foot slips.

I throw my right foot down to balance myself out.

I feel myself falling. I think to brace myself with my arms – but they are wrapped around this large box. My stomach dips.

A blur.
An explosion.
And suddenly, nothing but white light.

When I come around, I am sopping wet from head to toe. My body is wrapped around something. Little spikes – no, nails, exposed nails – are pricking me. It takes me a moment to determine what I am seeing.

My bedroom.
Only it is suddenly pink.
And I am hovering above it.

Before I have the chance to assume I am having an out-of-body experience, I realize that I am holding on for dear life to a crossbeam in the ceiling. I have free-fallen and crashed through. There is fiberglass strewn about the floor of the bedroom below me as my feet dangle just shy of the ceiling fan. I hear a voice.

Are you all right?

I turn slightly. It is my wife. She stands next to Matt, who has both hands cupped over his mouth aghast, as if he has just observed the neutering of a pet.

And then, I attempt to move.
It suddenly becomes clear to me what has taken place.
My foot slipped off to the left of the two-by-four I was standing on.
My other foot slipped off to the right.
I free-fell and blew out the roof with my feet.
But, past my legs, nothing else fell through the roof.
Because I was stopped. And where my hands were not free to catch my fall, something else had to stop me.
Another body part.

A pair of body parts.

And with the full force of my own 215 pounds – plus the 40 of the box I was carrying – I crushed myself downward, shuddering bluntly onto the crossbeam, literally slamming every inch of my being against –

…my precious.

As I attempted to uncoil my appendages from the protruding nails sticking out of the crossbeam, I began to fully feel the ache.

Is ache the right word?

Have you ever crushed an egg? Yes?
It was just like that.
Only set the egg on fire.
And then hit it repeatedly with a baseball bat.

Literally dripping from cold sweat, the pulsing intensity of pain was unbearable.
The pain that would mark the next year of my life.

And as I lay there, damaged and broken and counting how many ninja points this stunt would probably be worth, only one thought kept running through my mind.

Now I don’t have to put this stupid box away.