WOSTER: 'Pain don't hurt'

• Terry Woster

Terry Woster

Talk about it

So, when you go outside during a wedding reception, take a short walk around the building in the gathering shadows of night and then walk back into the building right smack into a glass door that is totally not as open as you thought, you stagger away feeling battered, bloody and more than a bit buffoonish.

I did, anyway, at my granddaughter’s wedding late last month. McCrory Gardens made a lovely setting for the outdoor ceremony. The new visitors’ center or whatever it’s called made a marvelous place for a reception and dance. A good time was had by all — or all except me and the family members I called to come outside and check my head wound. Those things bleed a lot, even the simple ones, and after I got my bearings following my bounce off the (incredibly clean) glass of the door, I realized I couldn’t go inside and let blood drip all over the new carpet. (I must have been thinking clearly, right?)

The upshot was, I went to the car, grabbed some tissue to press firmly against the wound, maintaining constant pressure (I learned that from the registered nurse I married) while I fumbled for my phone and called that registered nurse. Her phone went to voice mail, and I pictured the moment before the wedding ceremony when she fished her phone out of her purse and turned the sound off. I called my older son and got his voice mail (and learned later he was dancing with the bride just about that time — a moment I would have loved to have witnessed, and would have if I’d gone through the entryway instead of not-quite through the glass). Finally, I dialed my younger son. He answered, quite excited, since it was maybe the second or third time I’ve called him in our lives.

(In my defense, he doesn’t call me all that often. He tends to call his mother, and she tends to call him. I tend to ask her what’s new with the kid. And as I’m digressing, it seems pretty crazy that everybody I’ve named so far in this story has their own phone. Time was I’d have had to search around for a phone booth to call the reception desk in McCrory and plead with whoever answered to page Nancy or Scott or Andy — or maybe some random stranger with emergency medical training.)

After what seemed a long time, Nancy came to the car, followed by Andy and his fiancé. Turned out, it wasn’t so bad, although it would have required three or four stitches, had we chosen to go the route of conventional medical treatment. We opted instead for the shopping center course of treatment, a spray bottle of disinfectant, some super glue, gauze and a handful of butterfly bandages. It didn’t hurt all that much, and as I like to remind folks when they ask if something is hurting me, “Pain don’t hurt.”

(That’s what Patrick Swayze said in the movie “Roadhouse” when the ER doctor was about to staple a huge knife gash in Swayze’s side and asked if he wanted something to deaden the nerves. It isn’t as good as “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” but it’s a great movie line.)

Folks wondered why I was outside. It’s an old-guy thing. A banquet room full of people, spoons clinking on glasses, silverware tapping dinner places, a DJ playing dinner music in the corner, four different conversations around me? The hearing aids dampen some sounds and filter others, but they get overwhelmed sometimes, and I need a few minutes of quiet. I had a few of those in the car with the tissue pressed to my forehead.

Downside? I missed the couples dance when I could have been on the floor with my bride of, oh, several years. Upside? It looks like I might have a rather rakish scar over my right eye.

Besides, as I told a lot of folks, the place was full of Lyman County people. It isn’t a real Lyman County wedding dance unless some blood is spilled. I was honored to contribute.

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