...there I was, workin' like hell to get the wheat in when something got caught in the thresher.

Cursing, I climbed out of the air-conditioned cab of my tractor, spilling the dregs of my coffee on my coveralls and the seat as I did and hopped down to find the culprit.

I looked in the blades of the thresher and there it was: a goddamned corn seed sign had blown over the county highway from someone else's field - probably the good-for-nothing Jokinens - and landed in my wheat, waiting to gum up my thresher.

Cursing some more, I grabbed it with both hands and tugged it free.

At just that moment, I remembered that I had left the tractor running. I was sure I had taken it out of gear, though.

Later, after I woke up in the hospital and saw the clean, white bandages covering the stumps at the end of my arms where my hands used to be, I realized I hadn't.

-----

Yeah, you're right. That didn't really happen. For some reason, though, that was always my first worry when a correspondence (this is back in the old days, kids, before the magic of email) ebbed silent.

Don't worry, that hasn't happened to me. I still have all of my limbs and I've not been dragged away from my computer to struggle vainly to keep my family safe and fed (no more than usual, anyway). 

I've just been grappling with the same sort of ennui that my close personal friend SP seems to have as well.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the spring we've longed for is taking its sweet fucking time getting here - lows are projected to be near freezing tonight, with a chance of the S-word - or maybe its the fact that things in the outside world are seeming to be turning to shit even faster right now.

I dunno, but I've been bitching to myself that all of my pals seem to be observing radio silence right now, when I feel like I need them most.

Then I realized, as my old friend Rodney taught me (among innumerable other nuggets of pearly wisdom), 'Telephone works two ways, man'.