Mud Fence Creations | Conni Delinger
I was always going to my mom’s in Arizona to check on her and do any maintenance needed. She lived 65 miles from the nearest town, so I had to haul everything over there like ladders, tools, anticipated supplies, etc. One hot summer day, I decided to clean her gutters in preparation for the monsoon season.
On her patio, she had about 20 annoying white planter pots of dirt all in a row - just dirt, since she could never grow any plants. Fortunately, I did not inherit her brown thumb. I kept tripping over the pots, so I finally shoved them all to the side, into a block of plastic and dirt. I then went about cleaning the gutters, moving the ladder, climbing back up, etc. Burn, thighs, burn. Mom was standing below, ‘helping’ me, but mostly yammering about nothing, distracting me, so I asked her to go make us a sandwich.
I decided to lean ever-so-much-farther, to get that next little section of the gutter, rather than make yet another trip down to move the ladder. The soft mud gave, the ladder shifted and collapsed, and all I had to hang onto was the sheet metal gutter. I screamed bloody murder, slid along the gutter with my hands, and fell onto, yep - all those plastic pots of dirt!
They broke my fall, instead of me hitting the concrete patio. I ended up tangled within the mangled aluminum ladder, and the neighbors came running from all over the cul-de-sac, having heard my screams and thinking my elderly mother had fallen (although she would never have done anything as indelicate as screaming). As I reviewed my Gray’s Anatomy book in my mind, and compared it to my own anatomy, counting bones and body parts, I was thankfully intact, except for the sliced hands. My mom came running out and tried to rip the ladder off me, which started me hollering, since I had several vital anatomical parts still wrapped within the rungs and wreckage!
I soaked in the bathtub of the motel until there was no more hot water, returned to Mom’s the next day and did more work, then soaked again the next night. Lots of Advil, and there might have been some wine involved … I wasn’t feeling too bad, all things considered. Then I got in the car for the nine-hour drive home. I was a little stiff while getting gas at the halfway point, but when I drove into the garage at home, I could NOT get out of the car - I had frozen up solid! I had to honk the horn to get help – I thought I was going to need the Jaws of Life!
I ended up going to the doctor the next day to x-ray my strangely-angled finger (jammed), and he said that if he had not known me so very well, he would have called the police for domestic violence, since I had HUGE bruises on every limb and surface of my body, including black eyes – I’m not sure how THEY got there! I had brought the ladder home so my uncle (6’5”, probably 350 lbs.) would not try to use it, since they never ‘wasted’ anything as good as a mangled six-foot aluminum ladder!
A couple years ago, two female friends each tried their own ladder skills, days apart. One was “just going to change a lightbulb.” Both ended up with broken femurs, many complications, and very long, painful recoveries. It was a wake-up call for me, since I had also had other ladder-related near-misses, as well as the fact that my mother died from a broken hip, doing something that seemed right at the time, but it is very difficult to reform an independent I-can-do-it-myself woman!
So, if you ever hear of me going up on a ladder, just know that I have the rescue squad on speed dial!
Conni Delinger lives in Stanton. A business woman, she also is a freelance writer. Her column appears monthly in The Express. You can reach her at mudfencecreations@yahoo.com.