First of all, Teach insisted that I crip up to the 4th floor to get a paper copy of the syllabus from her (because, you know, it’s 1970 and the only way to transfer typed information from one person to another is in person). She opened with “Oh, well I guess you weren’t lying about that surgery, huh,” and that was when I knew we were going to be best friends forever.

So I show up to class the next day – without the 5 pages of original writing we’re supposed to have because her definition of “syllabus” does not include an actual list of due dates and assignments – and am met by a familiar face. Let’s call her Melinda. Melinda, boys and girls, is the theatrically insane patho who failed out of most of her journalism classes last year due to not-exactly-documented health issues and a tiny shoplifting incident in Collierville. Because if I’m gonna rack up a minor criminal record for theft, the CVS in Collierville is going to be my first stop.

“Omagah, Ash-lay! You broke your foot!  Again! Guys, I totally know Ash-lay. We go way back.” At this point the stares from the class register somewhere between disgust and plotting-her-murder on the hatescale, and I realize it only took these people one class period to smell the crazy and sit as far from it as possible. And, as psycho-path-o continues to blather on about our “good times last year” [read: me ignoring her during the three classes she did attend], I realize I have to sit next to her because I am crippled, the seat is close and I am about to fall over.

So Teach strolls in, and we spend the next hour talking about authors I’ve never heard of and the difference between literature and books. FYI: Twilight is not literature and you are a mildly retarded waste and parental disappointment if you even know someone who’s read it. Score another for my BFF. She is on a roll. [Gratuitous topless shot of Taylor Lautner.]

And now for the part that made me blush when I recounted it for Dot. So there is a little elderly couple taking the class together. Dude has a beard and wears a Native American necklace and Woman has glasses that are as thick as coke bottles, and she keeps them on a beaded chain. Adorable, right? Hold that thought.

We take a ten minute break, and Grandpa bee-lines it over to my seat, presumably to introduce himself since I’m new and we clearly both have osteoporosis.

“So this one time,” he says, “my wife over there got mugged, and her mouth was pretty badly cut up in the beating.”

“Oh my goodness,” I say. “I’m so sorry to hear that.” We have not been talking about crime or beatings (yet) in this class, mind you. OK, so he’s old and random. I’m professional in dealing with that.

He goes on, “Yeah, so I want to write a story about when I went to visit her in the hospital.”

“Oh? Well that sounds interesting.”

“Yeah but she won’t let me.”

“Oh that’s too bad.” [Notice: I do not ask 'why not?' here because years of attracting insane people have caused my craydar to go off, and I have had enough of that for one lifetime, thanks.]

“Ya know,” he continues, “It’s probably because when I went to see her she says, ‘Manny, do you think it will still be possible for me to jerk you off with just my feet while my mouth heals?’ And I says ‘Of course, babe! You’re really talented.’”

Cut to me choking on Diet Mountain Dew. “Wow,” I say. “Well that’s… really… something.”

So I’m now coughing and turning 8 shades of red while I attempt to get onto my crutches without passing out from the awkward or hitting Grandpa McPervy in the crotch with my crutches. You know, I’ve gathered that he really needs his crotch and GOOD-F’ING-GRIEF-WHY-HAS-THIS-OLD-MAN-NOW-CAUSED-ME-TO-THINK-ABOUT-HIS-CROTCH?

As I wobble toward the door and mumble unintelligible responses in the hopes that he won’t continue talking, he follows me, puts his hand on my shoulder, makes me turn around and says:

“You know the real kicker? She did it! Now that’s creative nonfiction.”

And I look over at Granny-Nimble-Feet – who I realize has been listening to this whole thing go down – and she’s just grinning like the day she was born. And then she winks.

I limp at warp speed to the restroom, assume the fetal position and use the next 8 minutes of break to forcibly evacuate all mental images from my bleeding brain.

I then spend the next 2 hours listening to three stories: one about drag queens and their emotional struggles with having to use penile tape to fit their junk into their rhinestone bikinis, one about assisted suicide gone wrong (ya know, typical), and one about how it felt to be black when Obama was elected President. Which my bleeding liberal heart would have LOVED had she not spelled his name “Barak” for 10 pages.

Naturally, I followed this class period with a scalding shower to wash the rest of the EWWW off my brain, the better part of a bottle of wine, and a serious plan to petition the Dean to officially withdraw from Class Crazytown. Which I officially did yesterday, citing the myriad of health problems I’ve currently got going for me as the reason I straight CANNOT HANDLE IT.

So thanks, geriatric health issues, for getting my crippled rear end out of that pool of skeev and away from those people who I’m know wear berets, like in real life, for serious. Because I simply can’t afford to add therapy for my mental health issues to this mix.

The second, however, was a full on freak-streak of good ole bad luck. I did a flip off the dock into the (30-foot deep) water and wish-boned the hell out of my 5th metatarsal (that’s the pinkie-toe bone for those of you who haven’t spent the past 3 days signing medical mumbojumbo in order to get them to cut you open and screw you back together). In any case, this latest mishap landed me not only in a cast but also in the operating room, and the oxycodone is telling me that if I had to live through it, you should have to hear about it, so here goes.

Let me just say this journey began with delusion; I swore up-and-down that no one was going to put a cast on my foot. I charged up my taser and fully planned to make a run for it if the doctor tried to put me in another plaster hellboot. As it turns out, though, running is quite impossible, and I would prefer a cast to the current route in which they literally had to screw together two pieces of bone in my foot. So, you know, ouch and stuff.

Anywho, when I arrived at the surgery center, Shirley (a bescrubbed, bespectacled woman who looks like she’s been working the front desk since they invented penicillin) told me that gum-chewing would result in surgery cancellation and made me swear on the Bible that I had not engaged in such. Once I convinced her I was clean, she helped me sign the majority of my rights away, and then I was called into “the back” by an uberchirpy orderly named Pam.

May I just say, I feel like anytime you’re ordered to deal with “the back” of anything, you’re on the losing end of that situation – the back of the line, the back of the bus, the back of my hand, etc. I’m just sayin, can’t we fancy that up? Call it something ridiculously euphemistic like “the surgical spa” or “the repair suite”? Take that into consideration, Baptist. Preesh.

So at that point, I had a serious Come-to-Jesus with the anesthesia guy, who they were calling “Doctor Bono” (I think at his request judging by his tinted queerdo glasses) but who looked more like Apu from The Simpsons in scrubs. As I was trying to convince him to go ahead and dose me up with an elephant tranq, I overheard one of my curtained-off roommates say “So you wan me to take dis here toof out before we do dis? I ain’t got ‘em to glue it in derr real permanent yet.” Thankfully this reminded me to remove all my gold “teef”, so the community prep room was totally worth it.

Well, as Bono would never tell a lie, I was knocked flat out for the next 60 minutes. When I came to, it was all over, and I promptly began requesting the football-player-sized meds I had been promised. As it turns out, 2 big pulls of Delotid are all the hospital is legally allowed to administer, so I sobbed quietly until some random Turbonurse unceremoniously “helped me get dressed” by jamming my legs through my shorts and then turning me out into a wheelchair that I’m pretty sure she already had rolling at 10 mph toward the door.

And that’s how I came to be in my current hobblestate. Paul and Dot chauffeured me home, let me order one of everything from some chain Italian restaurant in G’town, and listened to me ramble through my pilly haze about how this is “THE BEST PIZZA I HAVE EVER EATEN. No seriously. Like they use TWO kinds of cheese on this pizza. How did they even THINK of that? We should write in to the Food Network and tell them about this.” And then Dot took my happy bottle away.

I have since recovered my little magic beans and am considering testing out my (nonexistent) left-footed driving skills in order to attend a hopefully one-time-only HandiCapable Sleepover with a few other Unfortunates. So keep your fingers crossed that my left foot works better than my left eye, or this could be the first and last you hear from Ripley Pickles. Happy Labor Day, everyone! Now go forth and limp large. I plan to.