15 People I'd like to Dope Slap with a Mail Armor Gauntlet

Matt Conlon published a really great, thought provoking post yesterday about listing 15 people you'd like to hang out with. Read it HERE.

I thought long and hard on this, but now's not the time for me to develop such a list. Over the last two years my wife and I have been put through a bit of a ringer:

1) 2010 started with me having a tangled up mass of veins removed from my chest...BEFORE they burst or turned all cancerous on me.

2) Shortly thereafter, the wife was hospitalized with a pretty severe asthma episode.

3) A month later, she needed surgery to repair a bad shoulder. DURING that surgery, when they intubated her, they lacerated her pharynx to within a couple of mm (yes: millimeters) of her carotid artery. She ended up in the ICU for something like 14 days, no food or drink for 10 days. Bad stuff.

4) I totaled my 1-year-old Tundra, after which *I* needed surgery to repair a bad shoulder. No issues with my surgery though...feeling *much* better. Got a replica of the Tundra too.

5) Less than a month after I returned to work, we were having a large party at our house. The truck delivering the tent hit first a telephone pole on the way into our driveway, and then, on the way out, our 26-foot camper as it sat parked next to our house.

6) 10 days later, we were rear-ended on the stop-and-go highway (we were stopped, and the car behind us played the 'go' role). The wife suffered a concussion, brain bleed, and brain contusion, but the quack farm where the ambulance took her didn't tell her that, even though the evidence of it was in the CAT scan they gave her.

7) She spent 6 months out of work (just recently returned there), but en-route needed to have surgery on a hand damaged in the accident, lots of rest, and neuro-testing. She actually had a migraine that caused her to appear to be having a stroke - the whole right side of her body stopped responding...scary that too.

8) She actually lost her position where she works (which was an enviable job and location) and is now going through having to find new work in the company, and is getting bounced around to less enviable locations, which she worked really hard to get out of some years ago...back to square 1, after a fashion.

SO, my list would look more like 15 people I'd love to dope slap with a mail armor gauntlet (in order of who pissed me off most):

1) The stupid-ass just-turned-19 kid who decided to NOT watch the road and put us through a damn torturous half year and cost my lovely wife a job that she has worked really hard to get and be successful at.

2) The moron cop who showed up at the hospital after that accident but NEVER FILLED OUT AN ACCIDENT REPORT, AND DIDN'T GO TALK TO THE KID WHO HIT US. These things made our work with insurance companies that much more troublesome.

3) The incompetent "doctors" who told the wife (who had a bleeding brain AND a bleeding disorder) to take advil (a blood thinner) and you'll be ok in a week or two INSTEAD of telling her "Our tests indicate that you might have a concussion and some other stuff going on...we're going to keep you and perform extra tests to be sure", which would have to have been followed-up with "You've got some nasty things here...we're going to admit you and you need to lay low for a week or two so you don'g get worse or wake up dead". Can you say 'malpractice'?

4) The jackass who hit our parked camper, and then had the nerve to ask me to help him out by NOT reporting the accident, as that would appear badly on his driving record. He first hit a telephone pole, and then a parked camper...I don't think that he should be driving at all!

5 - 9) Just about everyone involved in insurance claims, as they seem to TRY to give you bad and wrong information, which ends up making it really difficult to file papers in the right place at the right time.

10) Ryan Seacrest, for giving us Kardashians.

11) My idiot son for his $650 speeding ticket (last thing I said to him before getting this ticket: "Keep it under 70 MPH". "Ok, dad.")

12) My OTHER idiot son for 2 suspensions from school in the middle of this other crap.

13 & 14) The two complete miserable assholes who precipitated the second idiot son's suspensions

15) The oblivious moron in his big, white, Cadillac Escalade who ran a stop sign and damn near ran me over yesterday while I was crossing a street.

It's a dangerous business, going out your front door. ~J.R.R. Tolkien (Bilbo Baggins)