Book Lovers Beware!!

Some of you may have already heard this, but it is such a funny story (to me, anyway) that I thought I would share it with everyone. (Hopefully Tyler will still speak to me afterwords...) Over Christmas break I had the privilege of having my whole family home for two weeks - the kids had their break from school, and Tyler had a two-week shut down at work, so he was home too. It was so nice to have them home, but a little frustrating too because the housework multiplied exponentially. Anyway, toward the end of the second week Tyler started complaining that his wrist hurt. (My wrists frequently hurt, so I confess my sympathy was low.) I advised him to take some Ibuprofen-which he did-but to no avail. Not only did the pain persist, it got worse and seemed to travel between his wrist and his elbow. Finally, after over a week Tyler went to the Doctor to have his hand/wrist/arm looked at. The results were - well, amusing.

After doing several tests, the Doctor informed Tyler that the tendon which allows the thumb to bend backwards (and thus travels up his arm) was seriously inflamed. He had a big long fancy name for it, but I call it Reader's Thumb. Tyler was instructed to wear a brace on his hand/wrist which immobilizes his thumb for two weeks and take an anti-inflammatory three times a day.

When Tyler came home and told me the diagnosis I just laughed! For days we'd been trying to figure out what he had done to his wrist - had he hurt it shoveling the sidewalks? No. Was it from carrying Lida around? No. Had he fallen on it? No. Come to find out he injured it by Reading! Yes, folks, that's right. Reading was his downfall. How do I know? For the two weeks that Tyler was home he did almost nothing else (if he could possibly arrange it) but stretch out on the couch and read. And I'm here to tell you that the books he was reading were not little flimsy 100 page jobs. Oh no! They were big fat novels that I can't hold in one hand for more than a few minutes (due to the wrist troubles I mentioned earlier). Hours and hours - day after day - of holding up those enormous tomes did him in. I still laugh when I think about it. I'm laughing right now.

I suppose I shouldn't get so much amusement from my husband's suffering, but I think there is a certain amount of poetic justice involved here. You see, there were times over that Christmas break when I would look around from washing the dishes, or making dinner, or folding laundry and see my family all sprawled in the living room enjoying themselves and wonder why it was fair that they got to laze around the house and I didn't. There were even times that I would hear Tyler's voice from the living room announce that he should get up and give "Mommy" a hand and stop being so lazy. Only to turn back to his book a minute later. So, now you know why I laugh every time I see him try to eat or open a jar of peaches or write himself a note. Because the really poetic part of all this, is that my husband reads with the same hand that he does everything else - his right hand.