Accidental Penetration and the Fibreglass Cow: Do You Know Me Better Now?

I always intended to kick off my Substack with a series of posts that would serve as a sort of introduction. An introduction to me, to my background, to the sorts of stuff I like and dislike and the things that I get up to online. I wanted - by way of this written series - to give you a full and rounded impression of my character and personality, because I felt that some people, especially if they were new readers, had rather a lot of catching up to do.

But the intense, all-consuming matter of promoting my upcoming book (How Not To Be A Supermodel) has somewhat taken my eye off the Substack ball. Sure, I’ve been diligently producing my free weekly post, every Tuesday, and yes I’ve been checking in and answering new comments, but have I managed to write my all-important series of “this is who I am” posts?

No I have not. Some of you must feel as though you know nothing about me at all. Other than the fact that I once fell down a coal hole, nearly died during a seagull attack last month and think Jafar from Aladdin is one of the sexiest Disney villains.

I mean. What do any of those things really tell you?

Anyway, I’m not here to dive in with the first of my enlightening introductory posts: it is the school holidays, which means that I am slowly losing my mind as I try, idiotically and naively, to maintain a working week whilst also looking as though I’m joining in with family “fun”. I do this every year, this wild juggle, optimistically believing that kids’ activities will just magically fall from the sky and keep them safe and entertained with zero need for adult supervision.

Ha!

It would be a terrible time to try and write a whole piece about who I am, what makes me tick and why you should continue to read my words: I don’t even have a clue who I am at this point. I will be identity-less for at least another four weeks and therefore cannot think of a single interesting thing to say about myself or recall any notable or vaguely fascinating event that has directly affected me…

…other than the incident last week that saw me almost impaled by the horn of a fibreglass dairy cow.

I won’t tell you where, anatomically, the impalement almost occurred because you can probably guess. Especially if I tell you that I was, when the near miss happened, clambering between the head of one fibreglass dairy cow and the rear of another, trying to rescue an errant toddler. (Not even my own! Imagine how galling it would have been to have suffered an injurious penetration - no matter how shallow - rescuing someone else’s child!)

But it was a close call. There was a definite firm nudge at the back door and had my trusted H&M denim shorts been made of lesser stuff then I think I’d have been in all sorts of trouble. (Best fifteen quid I’ve ever spent. They’ll outlive civilisation, those shorts.)

And as I dismounted the fibreglass cow, sliding inelegantly over its haunches, I didn’t even think about the dozens of people who had no doubt witnessed my close encounter of the derrière kind: all I could think about was the fact that I’d found the perfect subject for my next Substack post. By God I’ve got it! I thought. I know exactly the thing I’ll write about that’ll help people get to know me better! I’ll resurrect my post about accidental penetration!

For the cow incident was not my first time at the accidental penetration rodeo, no siree. I’ve nearly had an unexpected spearing once before. I’m either incredibly unlucky or brilliantly fortunate, depending on your perspective. And so let us wind back the clock five years (how can it be so long? I remember it like it was yesterday!) to the time something horrendous almost happened to me in the bath*. Something that made me think quite differently about those dreadful hospital stories you hear about, the ones where foreign objects end up in places they were never meant to be.

(When I say “end up” I mean inserted and when I say “places they were never meant to be” I mean the long dark passages of the human body, specifically the back one. If the rest of this post sounds as though it’s going to be more than your constitution can handle then I’d advise you to turn back now; it’s only going to get worse.)

Now look; we’ve probably all been told various hospital-based anecdotes about over-enthusiastic object-insertion. Some of them must be urban myth, for sure, but on the other hand I’ve known a fair few people who have actually worked in A&E (ER if you’re in the US) and have revelled in telling their first-hand stories. The man stretchered in from the ambulance with a hoover hose sticking out of his rear, the woman and the coke bottle, the lemon that was wholly stuck in an unholy cavity, like stuffing in a turkey; the stories of cucumbers and remote controls and Christmas baubles and Barbie dolls and things so utterly bizarre you have to wonder what an earth the person was thinking.

We’ve (mostly) all heard these stories and perhaps we’ve laughed, aghast, or winced and wondered at the utter humiliation that would befall a person who had to go to A&E with such a predicament. But for me, the most cringe-inspiring part is always the array of excuses people come up with to explain their condition; the yarns the patients weave in an attempt to clear up any misunderstanding. Rather than truthfully saying “I fancied seeing what it felt like to insert a giant marrow into my bottom because there was nothing much good on telly and my wife had gone to aerobics class” they say things like “I was cleaning the hallway floor – with no pants on – and I slipped and fell and the umbrella was drying upside down and the carved wooden handle just slipped in!” Or, “I was hoovering – naked – and I went to hoover some cat hair from my stomach and my willy just got sucked down the nozzle!” Or, “I had been told that putting a whole lemon inside me – and then an onion – would cure my piles.”

I find the excuses more fascinating than the actual insertions themselves. And, until my own near miss, I had always dismissed these excuses as being 100% fabricated – elaborate lies conjured up in a panicked attempt to save face. But the thing that almost nearly happened to me, five whole years ago (not even remotely a close shave but one must embellish for the sake of a good story) taught me that no matter how unlikely a tale, we should always give people the benefit of the doubt.

(I say “always” but obviously there are exceptions. I mean if someone has a courgette retrieved from inside them and it’s wearing a condom, then that’s pretty clearly in terms of intent and purpose. No courgette in history has ever done man the courtesy of politely sheathing itself before “pointing up at a dangerous angle from the gap between the sofa cushions where it must have become wedged after I dropped a bag of groceries when I was unloading the car – naked – whilst watching Judge Rinder.”

You’ll be pleased to know that my tale doesn’t involve a courgette (praise be) – it doesn’t, in fact, involve any object whatsoever because nothing actually happened to me. But it’s what could have happened that sent my overactive imagination into overdrive and spurred me into writing this cautionary tale.

Brace positions, please.

I was in an unfamiliar shower setting, which sounds dodgier than it was, and this particular shower set-up happened to be an accident waiting to happen. It featured an “over bath shower”, which isn’t the end of the world (sometimes there are limited options when it comes to bathroom design) apart from the fact that the bottom of the tub was completely curved. Like a bowl.

It can be dangerous enough, for someone like me, showering in a flat, purpose-built shower tray let alone performing intricate washing acrobatics whilst tiptoeing about inside a completely frictionless – curved  – basin.

And I was reaching forward – bending over, if you will! – to grab the shampoo that I had placed in front of me in the bottom of the bathtub and as I leant forwards my balance was set all ajar and I squeaked my wet feet about to steady myself, but then – and this is the vital bit – I fell backwards and almost sat on the long, cylindrical knob that controlled the mixer tap. I say almost; it was more of a cold metallic nudge on the back of my upper thigh, but still. Imagine if my legs had been six inches shorter?!

Actually don’t imagine. Nobody needs that mental image.

Anyway the point of this post was this: who would have believed me on the paramedics team had serious misfortune actually befallen me? That I had reached for my shampoo and then stepped back at a funny angle, still semi-crouching, and that I had quite literally landed on the three-inch-long tap mixer appendage? Nobody would have believed me, that’s who. They’d have thought that I was doing some weird sexual ritual – I would have been a dinner party anecdote, an urban myth. I’d have been forced to move to a remote island. And the worst part of it all, the biggest indignity, would have been that my story was true.

OK, perhaps not the biggest indignity, but you know what I mean.

But what I’m saying is that maybe people do land on courgettes by accident. OK, that’s a stretch (literally!) but there must be some A&E stories that aren’t totally fabricated. There must have been occasions, throughout history, where people have fallen and things have – er – penetrated just through sheer force. Since the invention of the hoover, at least one poor sod must have been hoovering without pants on (perhaps he had been eating Doritos during a heatwave and chomped crumbs all over the carpet) and is it that inconceivable that he might have turned the nozzle upon his own person to quickly (and might I say very efficiently) remove the crumbs from his thackets of body hair?

Good God, imagine how well and truly stuck you’d have to be to dial 999 in the first place. The things people must try before resorting to picking up that phone.

“OK Bob, tie this string around the stalk part, if you can find it, and knot the other end around the door handle! When I bear down, you pull!”

or

“Maureen? Maureen! Now I don’t want you to panic, but I seem to have had a little accident on the car exhaust pipe. I’m going to need your help, Maureen, but I need you to promise – promise, mind! – that you won’t look directly at me. Just take the folded gazebo from on top of the chest freezer and throw it over my back. Then I’m going to need you to really summon up all of your strength.”

or

“Gloria? Fetch the WD40!”

I’d like to know about your really weird accidents - especially if nobody believed how it happened. On a very uninteresting level, I once stapled a heavy-duty staple into my thumb when I was fixing one of those huge industrial staplers and it hurt like a b*stard trying to get it out. I had the wound dressed and then, almost straight away, did the same thing again. Tell me you have better than that?

Let the anecdotal comments begin:

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*parts of this post have been taken from an archived blog post at ruthcrilly.co.uk