An uneventful life

Accidents happen when you least expect them. I was eating an apple in the kitchen staring at the rain pelting across the window, and pondering on a chapter that was causing some difficulty. It was a three apple job – it could easily have been a four apple ponder – but for the accident.

I raised the apple – a Braeburn – to my mouth and chomped down with some force – so much force that the apple sheared in a crunch and the entire north face of the Braeburn continued its upward trajectory and hit my nose with even greater force.
I never realised before that apples sting. I felt my nose had come off. Wondered what I was going to say and how long the pain would last. In the mean time I destroyed the evidence, consuming the offending fruit in vengeful bites, but swallowing carefully in case the Braeburn planned a counter-attack.

My nose continued to throb. One nostril seemed blocked, by blood or an errant pip. It was time to see how bad it was, consider how much of the truth to tell my wife. Hit by an apple? For God’s sake. I entered the bathroom with some trepidation and stared into the reflection of a virginal nose, a nose unscathed, blameless, unblemished.

I felt cheated.