Today, In Casualty...

Anybody who's anybody, who has set a spell on the Mansion porch since its inception, will recall that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is a big fan of ER. She watched every episode. She has most of the DVD boxed sets. So to use "casualty" in reference to an emergency room is just OH SO ELISABETH CORDAY GREENE of Mrs. HM. But that's how she rolls.

Today a strapping young lad attempted to enter the classroom of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom. Normally, HM is in the hall as the students arrive, with her door propped open by a purloined doorstop. But she was momentarily delayed second hour, and a couple of young 'uns had to open the door to enter. Which is not something excessively complicated.

Here's a little refresher. Push down on the door handle lever. Pull the door open wide enough for your body. Let go of the door handle. Step through the doorway. See? A child could do it. But apparently not a fifteen-year-old. That mean old door has a metal latch on the side that comes out when you let go of the door handle. It's deadly. It gouges tender wrist flesh until blood flows.

After a threat to sue both Mrs. Hillbilly Mom and Newmentia for the pain and suffering, Walk In Wounded recognized the stigma that might be associated with a person unable to walk through a door without hurting himself. He even declined a proffered Scooby Doo bandaid. Mrs. HM offered to look into padding the door and walls to prevent further injury, but WIW decided that was not necessary.

Thirty minutes later, in the same class, a dainty lass stabbed her own finger with her own mechanical pencil. She didn't even look depressed. Her story was that her pencil flipped out of her hand, and she tried to catch it, and a piece of lead broke off in her inner knuckle. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom inspected the dry but smudged wound, and advised a follow-up with the school nurse when she made her scheduled appearance three hours later. Pencil-Cushion attempted to heal herself by digging at the embedded graphite with tweezers from her purse, an illicit doctor's bag of sorts. This effort was rewarded with seepage of plasma and erythrocytes. Pencil-Cushion had the good sense to accept Scooby Doo onto her flesh, but was heard ten minutes later complaining that he would not stick. That happens when you keep lifting it to see how much graphite, if any, remains under your skin.

When fourth hour rolled around, and a girl appeared at Mrs. HM's elbow expounding on how the water bottle she had sneaked from lunch in her purse had leaked all over her pants and shoe (flip-flop, who cares that it's still freakin' winter in Missouri), and that she needed to go to the bathroom to dry herself off (good luck with that, there are no paper towels, only a hand-blower)...Mrs. HM could only envision a heels-over-head concussion resulting from the water droplets on the floor. With no yellow plastic sign to mark the sixth Great Lake, situated coincidentally under the Gouging Door of Death, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom verbally warned the entire class to stay away from that area until it evaporated. Which didn't take long, what with the draft whipping from the window behind Mrs. HM's control center to the door and hallway and under the kitchen door and out the open back door of the kitchen into the 48-degree parking lot. (The cooks can't stand the heat, yet they can't get out of the kitchen).

I really need to sit down and wave one of those End of Times signs.