Good thing I lead such a sedentary lifestyle

Over a week ago I was using our apartment's little tiny ironing board. It's the kind with the wee little legs so you have to set the thing on the ground or on top of a table to use it. I was sitting cross-legged on the living room carpet, ironing away at a new red fitted sheet to cover my box-spring. (Note: Pictures of new improved fabulous room coming soon!)

Anyway, during the ironing I leaned forward a bit too far to grab some more sheet and pulled back a bit too far with the hand holding the iron. So I backed the thing onto my leg and gave myself a nice right-triangle-shaped burn. I thought I was taking good care of it but it turns out that I didn't keep medicine and bandages on it for long enough. Am back to doing that, but it's kind of not getting any better and looks really, really gross. I'll probably lose the leg.

So on Sunday in Relief Society the teacher was wrapping up her lesson on integrity. (She did a great job, btw.) Near the end, she said we should take private inventory and see where we might be falling short. And that it's not always pleasant to acknowledge our weaknesses but it's better because then we can work on them and ask for the Lord's help.

And then this happened.

Teacher: Now, I hope this analogy won't offend anyone, but I'm a nurse and so it's one that really makes sense to me. Let's say you've got a really bad sore on your body.

Me: (looks down at leg--check)

Teacher: Would you just keep putting the same dirty dressing over that sore day after day and expect it to get better? What do you think would happen if you did that? If you just added bacteria and filth to that open, weeping, crusty sore?

Me: (starting to feel a bit queasy--also my stomach was really empty, which didn't help)

She continued to talk about how the sore would get infected and start to putrefy and smell. And it won't get better if you keep it in its own filth and what you need to be doing is changing the dressing and scraping away the diseased flesh and cleaning it and letting it get air and light.

I started turning green at this point. I mean, it's a very, very effective metaphor but I was kind of about to throw up everywhere. She kept going while I writhed in my seat. But I didn't feel like I could really raise my arm and beg her to stop without looking like a supersensitive wimp or worse.

"Sorry, but this is all just a bit too close to home!" (as I hold up bandaged, diseased leg)

"Sorry, not to be all 'the wicked take the truth to be hard' but I'd like you to stop talking right now about all this 'cleansing our lives' stuff because maybe not everyone wants to hear about that."

"Sorry. I'm allergic to metaphors. They give me hives."

"Sorry, it's just that I'm really hungry and you talking about all that diseased flesh is really doing things to my stomach."

Posted in: being a Mormon