The family dog ran for cover as the keyboard hit the floor. "Arrgh! I don't know where to start!" I screamed. Two hours after sitting down to write my first novel; I squirmed in the hard kitchen chair I'd chosen because I heard that hard chairs support hard thinking. "It just makes my ass sore..." I mumbled to myself as I bent to retrieve my abused keyboard.

"I'm sorry, you can come out now," I said to Pringles, an overly sensitive toy poodle, who, though purchased by my wife, Martha, had become my constant companion at home. Pringles was cowering under the telephone stand near the front window, looking very dubious. "Have it your way, you wimp!" I laughed at the worried look on the poodle's dusty gray face. Not for the first time, I wondered if all poodles turned gray as they aged.

Figuring I might as well take advantage of the distraction, I padded in my stocking feet to the kitchen to make pot of tea. There was something very literary about a cup of Earl Grey on a cloudy morning, especially as one embarks on the Great American Novel. Besides, I could spend the next twenty minutes brewing the tea and hunting up a couple of those ginger snaps I like so much. It was 10:00 am, and Martha was still in bed, so I decided to heat the water in a sauce pan to avoid a whistling kettle.

As I stood by the stove, waiting for the water to boil, so I could pour it over the aromatic leaves, strong with Bergamot orange, and wait the obligatory six minutes for the tea to brew (Six to Brew, Longer to Stew...), I pondered my dilemma. I had a million ideas for my novel, and thousands of places to start. Not one of them appealed to me at the moment, and I was rapidly becoming frustrated with my inability to choose a place to begin.

I turned left to reach into the cupboard for the tea tin, and stepped on Pringles’ right front foot. Pringles squealed like a pig being slaughtered as I overbalanced, tipping the pan of hot water on the floor. I shifted my weight to my right foot to avoid stepping on Pringles again, but my right foot was in the hot water. The water was very hot and instantly soaked through my sock. I roared in pain, slipped and fell backwards.

All moved in slow motion, and my awkward kitchen ballet was about to end in a heap on the floor. I was wondering if all the noise would frighten Martha, when my head hit the edge of a kitchen chair I'd used to reach for the tea pot - the plain brown one that looked so British. Pain lanced from the back of my skull out through my eyes and I heard a loud crunching sound. The lights went out, and I never felt my body hit the floor.

Slowly a dark gray haze became a light gray haze, and finally sharpened into the darkened interior of our bedroom. I was standing by the bed, watching Martha struggling to climb up off the floor. Apparently, in her haste to get out of bed, she'd slipped on the carpet or something. She was shouting my name, and yelling as though muffled and far away, "What happened, Brian, what was that noise?" She ran from the room and down the stairs to the entryway adjacent to the kitchen.

As I wondered what she was racing down to see, I was suddenly there, standing in the kitchen directly below our bedroom, watching Martha's face contort in sudden panic and pain, as she screamed my name and dropped to the floor next to...me! Well, at least it looked like me, though I didn't remember my butt being that large, or the love handles protruding from under my T shirt. I wasn't moving and my right leg looked sunburned and blistered down the outside and the back of my right calf. I was drifting over to watch, when I suddenly remembered where I was supposed to be, and an instant later, my life was all about pain in my head and the fire in my right leg.

Just as suddenly, I could hear Martha's panicked cries in exquisitely painful clarity, because she has shouting in my left ear, while cradling my head in her lap. "Brian, Brian! Wake up, please! Oh God, please help me! Jesus, help him, help me!"

I opened my eyes and tried to tell her to please shut up for a minute, and I would be okay. All that came out was, "Shaddub." I tried again, "Saw right, caw nine one," I stammered and gave up because I was having trouble getting my mouth to do what I wanted. Fortunately, she understood immediately, calmed down, and dialed 9-1-1. She told the dispatcher her husband fell in the kitchen and needed an ambulance because his head was bleeding and his leg was par boiled. At this last comment, our eyes met, and she started laughing — laughing with large tears running down her sweet face.

When the paramedics arrived, they strapped me to a back board and put me on a gurney. Martha huddled against the kitchen sink, still in her flannel night gown that was all stained with water from the kitchen floor, and quite a bit of red stuff that had to be my blood. I didn't realize I'd been bleeding so much. I tried to smile, but it must have looked like a grimace of pain, because her eyes teared up again, and she shouted, her voice very husky with emotion, "Don't you die, you clumsy ass. Don't you die and leave me to clean up this mess."

I could smell tea, probably pekoe from the odor, and something that smelled like boiled bread. I opened my eyes without pain, and happily realized I had binocular vision again! Happy that is, until I saw the bowl full of what was obviously Cream of Wheat sitting next to one of those stainless steel tea pots with a Lipton tea bag string hanging down the side, and arranged with a couple of slices of white bread that might be toasted on a lovely aqua plastic tray. I had graduated from the province of pain to the land of bland. Joy...