Lawn Lacerations and Limb Loss

While you ride your scooter or bicycle on the highways and byways of this great land, you'll notice good folks mowing their lawns and keeping their yards manicured and pristine. With these little two-stroke engines, people chop grass and sometimes fling detritus in the air. It is this detritus with which we are concerned.

You see, as you pedal along (or buzz by), rocks are fired at you with tremendous speed because the mower has neglected to realize that parallel mowing can impact passersby. You - a passerby - are subsequently struck by a sharp rock that slices cleanly through your elbow joint and arm, leaving you without any control over the handlbar of your vehicle.

Then, as you veer toward the municipal bus - speeding as usual toward you while the driver text messages her order for a lunch cake - you understand the fear early pilots had when walking around prop planes. And, just before the impact that takes your life, you think about your own lawn and how brown and dead it will get without you around to tend to it. To the very last, worried too much about what others might think of your outward appearance and too little about your inner beauty.

Escalating One's Fears

That the escalator on which you’re riding has a too-big gap between the plates forming its stairs. And the shoelaces on the shoes you chose to impress your audience (at the latest Inbound Marketing Summit session on how social media can actually cure sick kittens and make food appear in homeless shelters all over the globe) are destined to be sucked into the escalator causing not only a horrible grated human mess, but underscoring the fact that not even Zappos can deliver happiness if a contraption invented in 1891 hasn’t been refined enough to keep people from dying atop it.

It's a Crock...Pot

Whilst napping peacefully on the couch, you hear a slight clank. A sound like metal on glass. Similar to the cats’ tag banging against the food dish - but different and more sinister. The sound continues at regular intervals, just frequently enough to bother you, yet not so often that you are compelled to get up and investigate.

After 11 tortuous minutes of this noise, your brain starts to fill in the unknown. You imagine a rat is hidden in amongst the clean dishes and will bite off your hand when you open the cabinet. Then you think it’s probably a snake that has come from the sewers of New York City - because that’s what they do. And finally, you think it’s a person who was buried in the walls of your house ten or more years ago. This person has finally snapped out of their suspended animation and is knocking on the wall with their hook hand in a quest to get out and find the evil people who imprisoned them.

Alas, the movie producers and dark-novel writers like Steven King have triumphed again as you get up and find out the sound is just something bubbling quietly - mostly - in the crock pot on the counter.

Just Buggin'

That when the bug in the shower gets washed away with your shampoo and other suds, it emits a scream that only other bugs can hear as it enters the drain and then a sewer’s worth of bugs from all the pipes in all the homes and drains all over town start crawling back up toward your shower.

And, as you rinse the vestiges of soap from your body and squeeze the water from your golden locks, an entire battalion of creepy, crawly, icky, slimy and disgusting bugs emerge from the drain and immediately block your exit from the shower. You know in an instant that your moments are numbered as the millions of tiny feet grip your clean, glistening skin and crawl up your body to enter your soon-to-be corpse through your screaming mouth.

Manicure Mania

That while you're getting your first manicure - a treat for your birthday or even Valentine's Day - you relax a little and let down your guard. Next thing you know, your hands that were so comfy and resting in a hot-wax bath are now zip-tied together and you're being ushered into a nondescript van. Also, a hood has been placed over your head.

When you finally come to a stop, you hear seagulls and waves. You're unceremoniously pushed into a metal box that you can identify as a shipping container once you pull off your hood (hands still restrained by zipties) and you bang on the wall to no avail.

When you finally land in Marseille, France, you are taken to a farmhouse in Provence where you're put to work picking grapes for Angelina and Brad Pitt. You don't die, but you are extremely miserable and don't have any hope of inheriting their fortune because unlike the other children they've purchased, your purpose was to work on their farm and not look cute during photo shoots.

Birden of Guilt

That while watching the myriad birds dine on the feeder outside - filled by your wife or partner and not you, you lazy so and so - you stroke the cat on your lap (not a euphemism) and wonder at the birds' grace and skill. You neglect to watch the lap cat who has now started to get excited about the flying meals on the other side of the window and has poised itself to pounce.

Then, without warning (that you paid attention to) the claws come out and rip into your spleen and liver while the feline soars, ironically birdlike, across the room toward the window. You feel little pain as you bleed out on your new couch, but you do grin a little in the knowledge that the stupid cat sliced itself to ribbons crashing through the window. And you wonder if you and the cat will soon be reunited in some ethereal place on a comfortable couch with a laptop and a window with a birdfeeder on the other side.

Out of the Cordinary

That when you grab the power adapter that keeps your Macbook juiced up, you feel a slight tingle that then turns into a blazing, shocking pain and renders you incapable of movement—shaking your body in what can only be described as a full-torso twitch and causing you to pee yourself.

As you shudder and fall to the floor you realize that one of the cats must have chewed the cable in a cry for attention, but only wasted one of their lives doing so. Ironically, they've pretty much extinguished yours in the same move. You last vision as your lids close on your soon-to-be corpse is of the two cats sitting by the door waiting to be let out. Your last laugh is that they'll have to feed on your body as nobody is left to look after them. Ha. Ha.

Tow Torture

That while at a content strategy meeting at the Microsoft NERD center, you find that your car was towed from the front of the building. Then, when you find out where to go to get your car you realize that the weather has turned cold and that all your coats are in your car. You also realize that the tow company in the next town is closed and the taxis are all ignoring you and you might have to sleep on the street.

The last straw is the guy who comes up to you while you sob on the sidewalk and steals your laptop, your tweetup badge and your cell phone so you end up dying on the street in the cold and raw weather. Carless and sad and disheveled.

For the Want of a Nail

That when you yank your towel off the back of the bathroom door, the peg it sits upon comes with it and plummets to the floor at light speed. The trajectory is such that it doesn't nestle in the soft mat, but instead wails upon the top of your big toe, cracking the nail and immediately causing stars of pain and vocal spurts of horror.

But the worst part isn't immediate. It's when, years later - after having had that nail surgically removed never to grow back - when you're hiking in the Virginia woods and you hear a rattlesnake. Extensive training has allowed you to possess the reflexes of that same snake that's about to strike. So you snap alert and cunningly avoid the venomous creature's first stab at you.

Unfortunately, your prior injury slows you down just a tiny bit and the next strike from the snake hits its mark, sinking fangs into your flesh and sending poison coursing through your veins. To add insult to injury - literally - the rattler bit went right through where your big toenail once resided. And had it been in place, the fangs would have likely glanced off harmlessly. This occurs to you as you slip into a coma and die, the result of a loose towel peg on the back of a bathroom door.

Oil Spill Horror

That when reporting for #ioilspill you bend near the water trying to locate a tarball and suddenly are attacked simultaneously from three directions...from the water's surface by an alligator, from the shallows by a shark who's angry that it's currently #sharkweek on Discovery Channel, and from behind by a local rattler who is peeved that you've left footprints on his sugar-sand beach.

Needless to say, your last thoughts are about the gator, shark, rattler Po'boy you're going to order in heaven.

Fox Fear

That even after speaking with the town wildlife management office about the minimal likelihood that a hungry mother fox will eat your cats, you collect one of your cats from under a bush in the neighbor's yard and while walking to the back deck you feel a sharp pain in your kidney area and turn to find that same fox latched onto your lower back with its sharp fangs. Subsequently, the cat freaks out and scratches half your face off and jumps to the porch while the fox rips a good-size portion of your flesh from your torso and scampers away. Leaving you to bleed and writhe on the lawn, cursing the local government and the entire populace of rabid foxes.

Catcher's Dilemma

That while playing catcher in a baseball game, you are positioned behind the plate in an appropriate place to catch the ball, but the pitcher and the coach keep asking you to move forward so that sinkers and other breaking balls don't bounce in the dirt in front of you.

You comply after much berating and instantly feel the error of you decision as the batter swings wildly at the next pitch - but because you had inched forward, your head is actually on the same plane as the batter's bat and your eyeballs and a pile of snot are expelled from your skull with the force of the blow. And you collapse in a heap...your last thought, "I knew chess club was a safer choice."

Roof Deck Decimation

That when the fine weather appears and you go to the roof deck of your apartment with a mint Julep to stroll among the patio furniture, you realize that your glee at the moderate temps was premature and in addition to being slammed brutally by blowing umbrellas and wrought-iron chairs, you notice the nesting badgers in the corner that are skulking ever closer to your tasty flesh. And when you turn to flee, your sundress or other previously appropriate garb catches on the edge of the roof and flings you like so much detritus to the deck two flights below. Just far enough to break a number of bones, but not far enough to deter the badgers from pouncing on your unprotected visage, claws first. Ouchie.

Tropical Travesty

That the new bottle of shampoo in the shower is of the coconut variety that makes you dream of hula skirts and tropical beaches, but to your dismay - and much too late to do anything about it - you find out that the shampoo is really conditioner. And while slathering this substance all over your body you remember from early physics classes something about a coefficient of friction and stiffen as you feel your feet starting to slide across the floor of the shower.

Your reaction is anathema to what you should have done (curl up in a ball and wait for the water to rinse away the dastardly slickness) and stiff body and all you start to career around the shower stall like PopRocks in a glass of Coke. And speaking of glass, that's exactly where you find your unfortunate escape - through the glass door of the shower, sliced to ribbons and bleeding out on the cushy mat that ironically does a fantastic job of soaking up your O Positive and the conditioner that led to your demise.

Can You Hear Me Now - Electric Slide Version

That while you ride your environmentally sound motor scooter around town the old folks and tree huggers in their modern semi-electric vehicles are chatting on their phone while sliding silently down the road. And, while you are minding your own business, these Prius-heads are so inured to the world around them - believing they are in a meadow or something - that they fail to hear you puttering along beside them. In fact, they are so against creating any noise pollution that they fail to even use their directional when they take over your lane, nearly crushing you to a pulp and causing you to worry that they might not even hear your cries for mercy as you become paste against the curb.

**Thankfully, the 130 decibel horn you had installed on your scooter jolted them back awake...BUT only after pressing it for five full continuous seconds.**

Mocking My Turtleneck

That when a friend invites you to their office because they have a gift for you, and then they let it slip that the gift is a turtleneck, that when you arrive and put out your hands you feel a slimy tube of flesh that actually came off a formerly live turtle.

And as you yelp audibly and jump backward, you catch the heel of your shoe on the rug at their office and stumble into the hall, falling backward into the Poland Spring water dispenser causing the bottle to become unstable and subsequently drop onto your head.

Well, yes, you're knocked out. But when you come to the horror isn't over because during your collapse, the rubbery, slimy, icky turtleneck squirted into the air and came to rest in your mouth. And as you awake you feel the calimari-esque texture in your mouth as you scream for help and nothing comes out.

Dressing Room Puncture

That while trying on eight-dollar jeans at the local thriftish store that starts with a K (Mart or Ohl's) you hop a bit and land on an errant pin that was left behind by someone shoplifting dress shirts. While one pin prick might be annoying and painful enough, the first stick makes you jump sky-high and you land with proportionate impact on another pin, then another and another and yet, another.

The resulting anguish and pain is so severe that you decide never to wear pants again and that decision limits your interaction with other humans to a bare (pun intended) minimum AND that in turn drives you mad, makes you get 57 cats and a house without windows (see pants-free description above) where you go slowly and inexorably insane.

Just because one person left a pin on a dressing-room floor.

Pancake Pyro

That when you're preparing delicious pancakes for your late breakfast on a snowy winter's day, the PAM-brand spray used to keep the pancakes from sticking inadvertently reaches under the skillet and easily attracts some deadly flame from the burner. The resulting tower of flame and destruction is enough to sear your arms off at the shoulder socket and suck the eyebrows from your skull. It's also injury to insult that the delicious breakfast you had planned is now destined to be a snack that the Fire Department rescue dog enjoys as he paws over your melted corpse.

Theatrical Permanent Sabbatical

That after you've watched the final showing of the final film in an old movie theater and get up to leave, your shoes get stuck to JuJuBe goop or some other concoction that's on the floor of the ancient building. And as you struggle to get free, the sticky mess causes you to tweak your ankle and you collapse to your knees. Then you realize that your feet, knees and shins are cemented to the ugly ooze and put your hands down to free yourself, but that doesn't work. The sugary death trap only behaves more like quicksand than a happy and tasty sucrose treat, and there you remain for weeks and months as spiders and other insects wrap you in webs and dust. You might stay alive by sucking on the leg of a movie theater seat, but then the wrecking ball comes and your frail visage is shattered and crushed like so many Hollywood dreams.

Scratching Pupil

That while you snuggle with kittens at night (not a euphemism) they try to get comfy by stretching their little claw-laden paws all over the place and inadvertently spear one of your pupils. The subsequent screaming causes the cat to quickly draw away and sprint across the bed to the other room...but not before your entire eyeball pops out of your skull and tears free of the optic nerve. This travesty is made worse by the sudden loss of your depth perception, which in turn causes you to walk squarely into the side of the bedroom door breaking your nose and painfully bumping into the doorknob.