Hit me baby, one more time

This morning I received a call from Walter, my seltzerman.
He was in the neighborhood, and I was home, so we arranged a hand-off.
For him, my empties, for me a case full of bubbly deliciousness.

In carting the case out to my doorstep, I dropped a bottle onto my face.

It was one of the beautiful aqua-colored ones at that!

It was heavy, and it hit me in the mouth and it caused my tooth to plow clear through to the outside world above my lip.

The bottle, weighing possibly a pound empty, is fine.
I, however, had a hole in my face.
It bled.

Like a good vain soldier, I ignored the nausea and headed to the freezer for some ice.

Alas! The banana-flavored Go-gurt portable yogurt that I keep frozen was the perfect size!
I applied it to my face (it fits perfectly between the upper lip and nose), took a phone call from my sister, who promptly laughed at the situation, and continued to get ready to leave the house.

But Walter is tricky.

The doorbell rang, and there stood the deliveryman and a special friend (with a microphone wire threaded through his shirt button-hole) whom he introduced to me as Steven, from The New Yorker.

Oh, Steven knew that I'd written about Walter before, and Steven had an unacceptably weak handshake and made truly poor eye-contact, but he did politely ignore the frozen yogurt I applied to my bleeding face.

Steven wondered if I'd heard about Walter before writing about him.
(Umm, yes, that's how I knew to write about him.)
And whether my seltzer delivery desire stemmed from a childhood bathed in bubbles.
(Alas, no. We didn't have delivery then.)
At this he seemed disinterested, and continued his lack of ocular contact.
(In his defense, maybe he didn't want to watch the bleeding.)
We talked briefly of my grandpa's appearance in Talk of the Town (a story for another day: about the utter horror of Brooklyn being forced to change from the 212 to the 718 area code!).
And then they were gone.

I called my mom.
She'd already heard the tale from my sister, who, in fact, found it funny enough to report on herself.
She suggested I take a cab to the emergency room.