127 Hours

Every one seems to be talking about the movie 127 Hours these days. (Which I haven't seen.) You know the movie about the hiker who gets trapped between rocks and has to hack his arm off to get free? I don't think I'm giving anything away by telling you that. It might be a Titanic kind of thing where you know something going in but it is about so much more than just that one incident. It's a metaphor! It's an allegory! It's a cautionary tale! It's a comedy! It's a love story! It's a story about good and evil, it's about man against nature, it's about the indomitable spirit of man! It is about the ultimate triumph of the human spirit! You can't keep a good man down! When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade dammit! (Like I said I haven't seen the movie yet.)

Although it does bring back memories of a time when I was drinking and I was so drunk that one time I somehow got myself lodged between the toilet and the wall. Which as any experienced drunk will tell you is really not that hard to do. (As I write this there are at least twenty drunks stuck behind a toilet in the Louisville Metro area alone.) I did black out for a while, so for all I know, I could've actually been there for 127 hours. I was trapped and I was trapped good. I was, if you will, stuck between a rock and a hard place. (You heard me.) How the hell am I going to get out of this? I'm stuck against the wall, one of my arms is over my head and I can't really move. I will tell you the idea of hacking off my arm did not occur to me at the time, besides the only thing within reach was a toilet brush and even in my drunken state it did not appear to be a truly effective amputation tool. In the annals of drunken battleground surgery, I don't think that the toilet brush has ever come up. The idea of chewing my arm off didn't seem real workable either, although it would be a lot more doable than trying to chew through the toilet. Exhausted, I finally gave in to a fitful sleep with a vague willingness to live and a distant hope that someone was out there looking for me.

I am happy to tell you that I eventually freed myself from the toilet trap and I am writing this with both of my arms intact. I am also proud to tell you it's been years since I've lost a battle with a toilet. But whenever it rains my right shoulder still hurts.

It does sound like a really exciting movie.