Different Hats

Once upon a time, I almost lost my big toe to lawn mower blades. I don’t know how the blades missed because I walked right into it. I can still feel the pain from the moment my left foot went underneath the machine. At first, I felt nothing but chills, everything became completely numb and I couldn’t even utter one word from my lips.

I used to work as a personal assistant for a wealthy family. I basically did everything that they didn’t want to do, things like: babysitting the kids, cleaning up the house, drove vehicles to the shops, worked on American Muscle cars, and did maintenance work like mowing the lawn or taking care of the pool.

I was always busy at this house. I was the nanny, the cleaner, the secretary, the landscaper, the painter, sheesh you name it I did it. Most of the time, I was outside taking care of the property. It was my responsibility to do the edging, spraying, cutting, picking, mulching, and designing when I had the opportunity. One of my major projects that I did was making this ginormous flower garden.

I did all of the work myself. I started with making the outline of the garden, then I removed the rocks and roots from the dirt. Then it was time to lay down the weed barriers and nail them into the ground. I went around the property and found large rocks to put in front to act as protection from dirt slides.

The family went and bought flowers, and I planted them into the ground. The deer came and ate the hydrangeas.

It was a lot of fun and extremely exhausting. Landscaping is hard work but I found that I really enjoyed doing this type of stuff.

I was all over the place on the property. I took care of the apple trees in the orchard either cutting branches or picking apples. Maintained the weeds, filled in trenches, removed rocks and trees. I had my own lawn equipment to work with; a push mower, weed whacker, leaf blower, and tools if something broke.

The owner helped by using his riding lawn mower. The property was big enough that I couldn’t do all of the work alone, so on certain days he would bring it out. While he did the majority of the lawn cutting, I did all of the other stuff that sucks to do. Things like edging the entire outline of the land, mowed the pool house area, front of the house, and etc.

One day, I was in the orchard cleaning up the falling apples and trimming. I heard the owner on the riding lawn mower and saw that he was coming in my direction. I stopped what I was doing and started to head towards him because I knew he had something to say.

The sun is shining down, I’m sweating bullets, huffing and puffing up the slanted hills. Sweat is falling into my eyeballs and I can taste the saltiness.

As I see the owner riding down, I wait for him to come to me. He arrives and speaks, but I didn’t hear a word. I take a few steps forward so I can listen, the mower is still powered on and the blades were still down. Within seconds of taking my steps, I heard the sound of a loud thud – almost like steel hitting steel.

I felt my body turn to jelly. I couldn’t hear anything except buzzing inside my ears. My left foot felt cold and wet, I lost my balance and slipped backwards right into the ground. I remember the owner asking me if I was okay over and over again, and I couldn’t give him answer. I was in shock trying to process what just happened, but all I could focus on was the apples dangling above me.

Finally, after some minutes passed, I could feel the pain start. My big toe began to throb as if it took over for my heart.

I laid my back against a tree and waited until I was ready to move. The pain was unbearable; I felt dizzy and saw my vision go smaller and darker. I was terrified of removing my UGG boot and seeing my toe cut in half. Eventually, I got back to my feet and was able to sit down and relax inside the house. I took the boot off and by the grace of God, my toe was still in place.

The blades from the mower missed my big toe. It hit between the nail and skin, but the toe was broken. As dangerous as it was wearing freaking UGG boots instead of steel toed boots for landscaping, they actually saved my toe. The blade hit from the top of my boot; the threads and material pushed the blade down, cutting a jagged zigzag to the bottom.

I decided not to go the emergency room because I don’t think there’s much you can do for a broken toe. It was hard to walk around for a few weeks, and anytime I did put some weight on it, I cried.

I’m very happy that I didn’t lose my big toe. My first thought after removing my boot was now I’m gonna have to learn about life without a toe. Which is fine, these things do happen because of being stupid, really. First red flag was wearing UGG boots as foot protection…near powerful machines. At the same time it saved my foot from being sliced like cheese.

My toe is fine now but my toenail grows weird. Oh well.

Now anytime I go near anything dangerous, I always make sure I wear my steel toed boots.