There are those days, those days when danger just finds you. A mild kind of danger that just ever so slightly chips away at your sense of security.  Those are the days you know things will happen to you in “threes.”  Yep, the first thing that goes wrong, just wait for the next two, because that is the way the day is going to roll.

Hazard One: the fireplace mantel.  Simple enough, there I was reaching down to clean up a random dog toy on the floor.  Poke, pointy corner of fireplace mantel into my right shoulder.  Oh, that is going to leave a mark.

Hazard Two: hot coffee.  Walking the boys out to the sidewalk to see them off to school, one of my beloved children decides to jump on me.  Jump on me, while I am holding a cup of coffee.  Hot coffee (fortunately chilled off some by the cold morning air) splashing on my hand and shirt sleeve.  Giggling children finding it humorous, then recognizing that Dad is not really pleased by the turn of events, and children scurrying off to school.  Insult to injury.

Hazard Three (not really): misfire, since it’s just the way God made me.  There I was at lunch with my wife and some of her friends.  I have seen the look from my wife before, a subtle glance up at my hair, as if to say, “What in the wild world of sports happened to his hair?”  Then, one at a time, I swear this is true, her friends took a glance up at my hair.  Nervous about the situation, but confident enough to finish lunch without fixing my hair, I took the first opportunity to look in the mirror.  Sure my hair did not look like George Clooney’s, but it also did not look like Carrot Top’s, it just looked like my hair does every day.  God made me this way, hazard three averted.  Or so I thought…  you see, days could be considered 24-hour periods starting at any point…  I was not out of the woods yet.

Hazard Three (for real): playful pup.  Our young beagle’s favorite game is “rope.”  He brings you the rope, you play tug of war with him for a while, then you throw it, he fetches the rope, brings it back, and you repeat this over and over endlessly or until he decides to just lay down and gnaw on said rope.  Well, this morning (within the 24-hour hazard period), young Kirby the Beagle misjudged his bite on the rope and bit into the cuticle on my right hand’s ring finger.  No ill intent, just a bad aim and the resulting blood.  Retrieving a Band-Aid, the only one I could find had flowers on it.  Strange considering I live in a house full of lots of young boys, but still it stopped the bleeding and I wandered off to work feeling at least somewhat secure in that I had survived my “three” hazards of the 24-hour day.  Then it hit me, I had a presentation to make at work and really did not want to be making hand gestures with a prominent flower Band-Aid.  Considering that I work out of the Public Health Department, I figured that they would have a spare Band-Aid I could use as a replacement.  Explaining to one of the nurses how I needed a more masculine Band-Aid, she gleefully provided me with a Spiderman Band-Aid.  Yep, that is how I ended the streak of hazards and now can utilize my Spider-Sense to avoid future injuries.  Plus, you have to trust a man presenting with a Spiderman Band-Aid, a true sign of confidence.

   Kirby the Beagle

plus…

   Rope Toy

equals…

   Spiderman Band-Aid