This past Saturday The Wife™ and I had a few friends over to the house for dinner. Two of the couples that normally join us for dinner on Friday nights now have wee ones, and we’ve decided to shift our weekly get-togethers to Saturday as a matter of convenience for all.

The weather was perfect, the babies were adorable, the beer was plentiful and it was quite the enjoyable evening. As usual, I should have been wary that things were going too smoothly.

I had gotten things inside the house mostly under control, so I headed out to the back deck to check on the grill. The coals were looking hot and ready, so I flipped the chimney over and spread out the little nuggets of radiant warmth, added some wood chips and replaced the top rack. We were now primed and ready to rock. I hurried inside to grab the sheetpans of prepared burgers, deftly avoiding Jonas and his all-too inquisitive advances to get inside. As I returned to the back deck, everything was in order. Except that I had forgotten shoes. See, I hate wearing shoes. In fact it’s pretty much the one stereotype about The ‘Tucky that I’ll ascribe too. Besides, I’ve got to try and blend in with the yokles a tiny bit. We stick out too much as it is and I don’t have cinder blocks to put the cars on, so this time we were totally going the “no shoes” route.

The very unfortunate sequence of events that occurred next was much like The Bleach Incident of 2006. As I approached the grill, I lifted the lid with one hand, burgers on a tray in the other. I planted my right foot with full weight only to receive the most searing, excruciating pain shooting up my leg.

I hopped. I yelped. I danced in a circle, on one leg, with eight burgers on a tray in one hand and a hot grill lid in the other. It was a magnificent performance of Redneck Swan Lake. What’s most surprising is that I never dropped the burgers. Or at least not that anyone inside knew.

As it turns out, a rogue red-hot coal had escaped the grill and landed out of bounds on the deck. I was unaware of this, which is why I was so dismayed when I placed all of my bare-skinned weight on top of it. And in case anyone was curious, it even made a nice sizzle sound when it happened. I thought that was only in movies, but I can certifiably say now, from first hand experience, SIZZLE in fact is a real life onomatopoeia.

So now I have an awesome burn blister in the convenient location of the ball of my foot/between my toes. And really, if you’re going to get a nice burn, why not have it on a place where you can put any ointment or avoid touching it? Brilliant.

Maybe I need to try the cinder block thing instead…