Yesterday’s Visit to the Emergency Room

Yes, my wife sent me there

by Allen Delaney

Editor’s Note: In this space last week, you read how Delaney’ determined his wife of 18 months was trying to kill him. This week, we find him in the emergency room.

Have you ever noticed that the words beer and emergency room are often used in the same sentence? As in, After one too many beers, Harry tried to do a double back flip off the high dive and wound up in the emergency room.

Harry was obviously unconscious because otherwise, no matter the severity of the wound, burn or break, he wouldn’t have sought medical care.

The male medical reasoning behind this is that all injuries caused by beer can be cured with a bandage, tape and more beer. However, there is another reason men don’t take care of their health like women do. The reason is the wife.

As you married guys know, if you injure yourself, your wife will insist upon driving you to the emergency room. There you are inevitably asked what caused the injury. The wife is all too happy to volunteer that information. Instead of your story, which you made up on the way to the hospital, that involved saving a puppy from the jaws of a pit bull, the wife explains the events leading to your bleeding finger:

We were hosting a crab feast, and after several beers my moron husband and his idiot friend decided to play Catch the Crab. Guess who was on the receiving end of the first pitch?

These things always seem like fun at the time, but the wife can make it sound as if she married the stupidest man on earth. It doesn’t help that she’s explaining your injury to strangers in the hospital parking lot.

When the doctor asks you how you broke your wrist, a simple I tripped over the garden house won’t suffice. No, the wife will be right by your side explaining how you and your neighbor decided to see whose riding mower was faster. As you rounded the rose bush at top speed, you tipped the mower over — not only breaking a bone but also burning your leg on the muffler.

The wife tells the doctor, the nurses and the patient in the bed beside you that your prize for the contest is an expensive round-trip visit to the emergency room. She then adds that the neighbor would have taken you to the ER, but he couldn’t stop laughing long enough to drive. And you thought you felt bad before you got to the hospital.

Most women today are independent. They hold good-paying jobs, own homes and even can have children without the help of a man. The only reason they get married is so they don’t feel left out on Monday morning as their co-workers try to top one another with You won’t believe what my stupid husband did this weekend stories.

No, the wife is all too willing to explain how you locked yourself out of the house while she was shopping. She describes how, when she got home, she found you stuck in the bathroom window and, adding insult to injury, asked, You thought you could crawl through THAT opening?

She goes on, often in great detail, explaining how the fire department had to use the Jaws of Life to extract you and how embarrassed she was at the hospital having to tell everyone within earshot, using sign language in some cases, how her dolt of a husband cracked two ribs.

So guys, I would tell you to be responsible this summer, but we both know that’s not going to happen.

No, what I will tell you is to have a good story ready for whatever injury you sustain. In fact, have several stories ready. One for burns, one for cuts and one for broken bones. Above all, when you make that trip to the ER, take a taxi.

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