Ronnie Dee--Down At The Ox And Bull

Down At The Ox And Bull

Ronnie Dee

I had noticed here lately, that due to my sedentary lifestyle since my retirement, my legs seemed to be getting a little weaker. I tired more easily than I once did and I just didn't have that same old pizzazz.

I was a postman with a walking route, so I got plenty of exercise on the job and didn't need to go to the gym or anything. I had some pretty strong elastic bands I used to keep my arms in shape and that was enough for me.

Since I retired, however, I had let myself go; slowly at first, where I didn't notice much difference, and it eventually became noticeable, but I was still in denial. Now, I can't let things get any worse, so I have taken to exercising more vigorously.

I still didn't want to go to a public gym and have everybody looking at me and sizing me up for comparison and secretly scoffing at me because I am an inferior physical specimen than them. So I decided to make my own home-gym in my basement. I could use jugs of water and bags filled with canned goods for arm exercisers.

For my more needy legs, I rigged up the extra strong elastic bands to a table-like device where I could lie down and push out on the bands, which gave a lot of resistance, or I could turn the table upright and step down on the bands.

This was harder to do standing up because I had to lift my leg up pretty high before I began to push down on the bands. Since this was more difficult to do, I thought it would be the best one to do most often. The resistance was such that the bands would easily lift me back off of the floor if I relaxed a little.

It worked pretty good for a couple of days and then things went awry. Tuesday morning I had been doing the exercises for a while and my legs were getting a little tired. I was just about ready to stop when I raised my leg for one last push down. I pushed down alright, but suddenly, my ankle gave out and turned a bit and the band snapped back with alarming speed and power. It smacked me right between my legs with astonishing force and I was hung up for a few seconds before I rolled over and fell to the floor.

It hurt too bad to scream. I just laid there making gurgling sounds and immediately felt sick and threw up several times. Lights were flashing in my head and when my wife heard the commotion she hollered, "Honey, are you all right?"

I couldn't answer.

When I didn't answer, she came down to check on me and became concerned when I couldn't talk to her. When I finally rolled over and let go of my crotch for a minute, she screamed, "My God, Look at your pants!"

My pants. I wasn't concerned with my pants, it was what was in them. But I looked and got a bit more queasy. It looked like I had a softball stuffed in my pants.

"I had an accident," I blubbered.

"I'll say you did," she replied.

"We're going to the ER," she proclaimed as she helped me get up and my stomach continued to do flips as I slowly trudged toward the car. She helped me into the backseat to lie down for the journey. When we got to the hospital they brought me a wheelchair and took me into the waiting room. For once it wasn't very crowded and we got to see a doctor in a pretty short time.

While I was waiting for an empty bay, who should I see being wheeled into the room, but my neighbor, Charlie Watson, who seemed to be in great pain.

"Hey, what's the matter with Charlie?" I asked someone.

"Oh, he had an accident," someone else said, and began to giggle.

"Silly girl," I thought, "giggling in the ER at someone's misfortune."

So they examined me and told me that there was nothing they could really do for me. There seemed to be no permanent damage, but they told me it was advisable to do away with my device and try something else. They also advised me to take things a little easy for a few days and the swelling would come down.

A few days after the incident, Charlie came over to pay me a visit. He was walking kind of gingerly and sat down carefully in a living room chair.

"What happened to you the other day," he asked.

"Damn Charlie," I said "It's really embarrassing."

"I'll bet it's no more embarrassing than mine," he confessed.

"Oh, yeah," I said, "Well OK, here's what happened," and I went on to tell him.

He did get a pretty good chuckle out of it and asked, "Are you doing OK now?"

"Yeah," I told him, "I'm getting better every day. Now, what happened to you?"

"Well," he began and he looked a little sheepish when he started, "I was doing some gardening with a half-sized rake and a hoe. I finished using the rake and grabbed the hoe. I stepped backward and stepped right on that rake. Well, it came up and smashed me right on the butt crack and it hurt, so I lost my balance and fell backwards, and-uh when I did, the-uh rake went right up inside me a good bit. I didn't have on my jeans, I had on some old, flimsy shorts that didn't offer much resistance to that rake. It went in so deep, I was afraid to pull it out. I thought I might pull out half my innards."

He continued, "While I was at the ER, a nurse asked me if I knew you, and I said 'Yeah, we're good buddies,' so I asked how you were and she said, 'Oh he's just fine now,' and giggled."

"Before I left," he continued, "I asked one of them little nurses what was so funny and she told me that since we had come in at the same time like that, they just couldn't help but refer to us as the Crotch Brothers. If this gets out, down to the Ox and Bull, and it probably will, we'll never hear the end of it."