I'm Hooked.
I can't say that I blamed them. I was in very little pain, didn't have a serious injury, and wasn't going to get worse as they let time go by, so I happily played my new Game Boy SP as others filed in before me, sitting there with a fish hook sticking out of the very top of my scalp.
I felt much like one of the people in the waiting room at the end of Beetlejuice, each with some strange affliction such as a shrunken head or being chopped in half, calmly waiting their turn.
How did I get here you ask?
Let's begin not with my journey, but with the trip the hook took on it's way to being embedded in some poor schmucks head in a waiting room.
Imagine you're a fish hook, happy to finally be free of the tacklebox you've spent most of the summer in and finally be used. You get cast out a few times, but the fish aren't really biting today, and after a while, it's time for you to go back in as a different bait comes out. But wait! Instead of making it back into the box, you're separated from your friends and stuck to a pair of jeans, embedded in the denim.
That night, you find yourself tumbling around with the jeans in the wash and the finally, in the dryer, you're free!
Until, that is, you're smothered by a great white towel. Instantly, your barb catches, and you're impossibly tangled in the terrycloth fabric. Once the tumbling stops, you're folded a few times, and finally find yourself in the dark of the bathroom closet.
So now, we've followed our friend the fish hook into its lair, where it waits for some unsuspecting prey to carry it to freedom.
This morning, I was that prey.
As Sara so wonderfully put it, "Thank god you dry your head first!"
As soon as I began to vigorously towel my head off, the hook sank its barb into the top of my scalp, hoping to ride me to the great unknown. The towel, which had by now grown quite fond of the little hook tangled inside it decided it wanted to come along too.
My thought process, as this happened, went something like this.
Huh, the towel is stuck. Must be gum in it. Who puts gum in a towel? Wait a second, it's really not moving. Huh, it feels like one of mom's quilt needles, yup, i can feel the head, and there's where it goes into MY head. *YANK*
OW ow ow. bad idea, bad idea. I think the pin must be bent. Time to call mom up. Wait. I'm naked. Towel first.
From there, we realized that it was actually a fish hook and proceeded to try to extract the sucker, but in trying to remove it by myself I'd set it in quite firmly.
Our stroke of brilliance was to go to the local Urgent Care Center rather than the ER, because I only had to wait an hour with the hook sticking out of me like My Favorite Martian, rather than the 6-8 hours I probably would have sat in the ER at a hospital.
Medi-call's doctor was great, and we all had a sense of humor about it so it really wasn't that bad at all. Kate called right after I'd done it, and we were all in hysterics.
"Hi, it's Kate. Is it Ok if we get there around 4:30-5ish? We're leaving now"
"Umm, well, here's the thing. I've got a fish hook in my head"
"What? I'm sorry, I don't understand"
"I've gotten myself stuck with a fishhook! It was in a towel, and now it's sticking out of my scalp. It doesn't really hurt at all, but I'm going to have to go to the ER, so I might not be back by then. Who knew this would be my first piercing?"
"... ... Ahhhhhhh hahhahahaha! I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but that's hilarious"
"No no, i know, I'm laughing too!"
"(Still laughing) Oh, my god, They caught a big one!"
When all was said and done, I got to keep the fishhook, we made it back before Kate and Doug even got there, and we all laughed so much it hurt. Worse things have certainly happened, and it's made this one holiday we'll never forget!
