By Marla Boone

Contributing columnist

The world, as you may have noticed, is a perilous place. Not just crazy, distracted drivers, you understand. Those have become so commonplace it’s now remarkable to pass someone on the highway who isn’t on their phone. Or applying make-up. Or giving a Zoom sales presentation. Or unconscious. Now it’s acceptable for three cars to cruise through intersections after the light has turned red. But only three! We have safe driving standards, you know. They’re awfully low, but we have them.

Having begun with the painfully obvious, you may rightfully be wondering what the point is. Here it comes: according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, there is an almost infinite array of ways in which to harm yourself right in the (dis)comfort of your own home. These aren’t bumps and bruises, mind you. Those you can get anywhere, especially on a pickleball court. Pickleball is not only the fastest growing sport in American, it is also the fasting growing source of revenue for orthopedic surgeons. No, the injuries cited in the Abstract are serious enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room. I know, I know, we’re supposed to call it the emergency department now but it was the ER to me for about 50 years and I just can’t make the transition to ED. For several reasons.

As a preface, let’s have the disclaimer: I am not making any of this up. These statistics come from a statistical abstract so you know they have to be true. An abstract is even truer than the internet. I haven’t actually read the book. I doubt if I could lift it. I read about the book on the aforementioned internet so let’s just agree everything here has been researched twice. A little more about the book later.

Almost a half million people are injured each year in incidents involving beds, mattresses, and pillows. Aren’t you glad I already told you I am not making this up? I can only assume these are back injuries from trying to turn a mattress singlehandedly. Because if one of today’s ultra-soft, ultra-supportive, ultra-heavy mattresses falls on you, you are not going to show up in the ER. You are going to show up on Ripley’s Believe It or Not when they run the story about someone who was trapped under their mattress and their cats ate them. About 350,000 people a year sustain an injury from a kitchen knife. I distinctly remember a recall that was issued for a set of high-end knives due to “risk of laceration.”

Injuries involving, I swear, “sound recording equipment” outnumber those from chain saws. Chain saws! The single most dangerous thing ever invented and, I might add, one of the most fun to run. It takes exactly zero imagination to think up a way to harm yourself with a chain saw. Conversely, I cannot come up with a single way to hurt myself badly enough to brave the ER with a microphone or a reel-to-reel unless you hit it with a chain saw and it shatters and a piece of plastic goes into your eye and then you can’t see and then you cut your arm off with the same chain saw.

There are 142,000 injuries a year that are inflicted by clothing. Finally! One that makes sense. Take scarves, for instance. Did you know the dancer Isadora Duncan was killed when the scarf she was wearing got wrapped around a car’s tire? Now look at how many people wear scarves draped artfully around their necks. When I try to wear a stylish scarf, it looks as though I am on my way to my own hanging. I am missing the “artful scarf” gene. Another way clothes can harm you is by slow suffocation. Yes. Many people try, in the words of Dolly Parton (who should know), to “put 10 pounds of mud in a five-pound sack.” If you somehow smush the 10 pounds of mud in, they are screaming (No wait! That’s you screaming!) to have the buttons buttoned. This is when the slow strangulation begins. It ends when the button pops off, glancing off your eye, aggravating the previous sound recording equipment injury.

Lastly, 48% of those who run a vacuum cleaner regularly end up with carpal tunnel syndrome. I’m sure not taking any chances on this one.

If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is: 1) Don’t cook. If you must cook, do not cut anything up. 2) Don’t clean. If you must clean, never vacuum and be very wary around dust cloths. 3) Don’t try to get your own copy of the Statistical Abstract of the United States. It’s 1,024 pages, so it probably weighs as much as your mattress.

Marla Boone resides in Covington and writes for Miami Valley Today.