Saturday, July 9, 2011

Don’t Ever Measure the Length of Your Husband’s Bow

We were home!  Home at the beach, our temporary haven.  We had just come back from seeing a wonderful life being played out before us in the country.  My husband was dreaming of hikes, hunting, and having “a wall” of his own.  Oh, to have a wall of animal heads in my future home, I couldn’t wait. 

“We are going back there, Janna.  We have to.  I want to hunt with your cousin Jeff.”  My husband said as he walked up behind me. 

“So you want to start hunting,” I responded with a smirky tone as I stood in the kitchen chopping vegetables.  I hadn’t turned my head to look at him for fear I would cut myself, which was a lesson I had learned before- always look while you are chopping with a knife.  It’s a good rule.  I set down the knife and turned around only to be shocked by my husband standing before me with a large bow in his hands.


“My word, Dan, where did you get that?”  I inquired.  When was he buying weapons and how did I not know this information, and what other weapons was he hiding from me? 

“What else do you have?”  I asked sarcastically, but to my surprise, he answered,

“I have a shotgun too.”

“Whaaaa?  We live in the city, Dan!  When are you going to be using all of these weapons?”  I asked, seriously wanting an answer.

“When we move to the country,” he said, while grinning from ear to ear as he looked at my face knowing very well what my response would be.  I rolled my eyes and puckered my lips to the side as to say, “Yeah, right.”  Deep down I really didn’t believe we would ever actually move out of the city.  The consideration of it was only a dream.

“Would you help me measure my bow?” he asked me with a tone.

I laughed as I walked over to him and his bow. 

“I need arrows for it and I need to measure what size I need to buy,” he said. 

He then explained his simple plan of measurement, “Okay, I am going to pull back the string as far as it can go, and I need you to use a tape measure and tell me how many inches it is from the back of the string to the front of the bow.”   

It sounded easy enough.  I would do this quickly and then get back to my chopping, so I thought.

He pulled back the bow as hard as he could.  “Hurry,” he moaned.  I could hear the urgency in his voice suggesting the intense energy he was expending just to hold it back.  I was in the middle of measuring it, being a good wife, assisting my husband, when I heard a very loud SNAP!  What was, I thought to myself, thaaaaaat?  By the word “that” I knew very well what it was.  He had accidentally let go of the string and its 65 pounds of pressure right at my hand.

I grabbed my hand and fell the floor with a pathetic girly scream, “Ahh.”  It sounded like a whisper scream because it hurt too much to expend a significant scream, and my body was going into shock.  “I need a bowl,” was all that I could gather myself to say.  I knew what was coming next.  I would be throwing up.  You see, every time I experience pain, my body decides it needs to throw things up.  I cut my finger, grab me a bowl.  I stub my toe, grab me a bag.  Someone steps on my ingrown toe nail, where is the trash can? 

He carried me to the couch with my bowl, a gesture which would have been heroic if he wasn’t the one who just attacked me.  I was white as a sheet.  A welt the size of a tangerine immediately emerged on the top of my hand. 

Dan began pacing back and forth, back and forth.  He then ran to the phone and called my dad.  “I hurt Janna.  I hurt Janna.”  My dad responded so loudly in the phone I could hear his voice on the other end, “What??!!!  What??!!!  What did you do to my daughter?!!!”  He sounded like a crazed chipmunk.

I lay there going in and out of consciousness.  I was actually kind of dying.

I waved Dan over.  “Hold on,” he said to my dad, “she is going to say something.”          

He came close to me; I waved him even closer.  I put my lips so close to his ear that they were actually inside his ear.  “I.  Will.  Never.”  I paused and then I pressed on to continue, “Measure.  Your.  Bow.  Again.”   

And then I laid my head back, and I was gone.    

Those were my last words.

For a very, very long time.

When my son was asked at school, “What happened to your mom’s hand?”  His answer was…

“My dad shot her with his bow and arrow.” 


Which was pretty much the truth.


  1. Oh my gosh, Janna...I can't believe I'm laughing so hard at this...I'm ashamed...and I'm so sorry your dear husband shot with you his bow & arrow...but, girl...I can't stop laughing...your poor poor hand...Oh, I am just so so looks horrible and so painful...and I'm just so sorry...but you tell an awful good story...

  2. Oh my goodness girlfriend! This post made me almost cry and also laugh. It looks pretty bad, I hope it gets better real soon!

  3. I hate to be laughing but I can't help it, you're killing me! Wow! How in the world do you manage to tell every story with such great humor!? Sorry about your hand, it looks painful! Tell Dan to put the nice bow away til you are actually in the country. :)

  4. OMG! I hope it's better now! That's crazy.

  5. All that I can say is... OMG!!! XoXo

  6. Yeah, I think that one would warrant both the barfing and the passing out. Yikes! Hope you're feeling better - and can still use your hand. Nothing was broken? Amazing. And owie!

  7. This is so funny, I also LOVE kids take on things and so sounds like it hurt pretty bad, hope you are doing better.

  8. Papa doing his thing ("crazed chipmunk") was too much for me to handle. I am so sorry for your hand... but oh man Janna... you make me laugh!

    Mr. Naraki

  9. Janna, that is really, really funny! Has Dan gone hunting yet. Or was this all a dream?

  10. Let's just say there are no animal heads on the wall yet.

  11. Oh man....that hand looks's it doing now? (Registered nurse in me has to ask!). Sorry but I too laughed at this story...not at your getting hurt, but the way you told the story...
    Get better soon!

  12. Janna-- for fear of littering your entire comment section like some lunatic Comment-Stalker-Lady, I have to say as briefly as possible that 1. I also tend to get super woozy and/or possibly puke or lose consciousness when freaky things happen (such as the time when I cut my thumb: see or whenever I have any particularly invasive medical procedures done... I get clammy, cold, woozy, and feel all nauseous, and my blood pressure drops until I'm delirious. 2. I also once managed to get a rather severe *eggplant-sized* bruise on the back of my leg while trying to SAVE my husband who had 18 sheets of drywall fall over his legs in the garage. Three sheets fell back on my calf while I was desperately trying to lift them off of him. But ultimately it took 3 firemen to come get him out; and meanwhile I was hyperventilating and oblivious to the giant bruise on my leg which grew worse by the minute. So yes, I can relate. :)

  13. Juanita, thank you for asking. It healed just fine. For a week my husband became Mr. Mom, so I like to think of my recovery as a little vacation.

  14. Off The Cuff Cooking,

    What a crazy story. You are kind of like a hero. You may not have been the one to save him, but you attempted, so I think of you as a hero, maybe Wonderwoman.

  15. you are crazy. i had no idea this happened.

    love you.