I'm a Stranger Here Myself Read Online Free Page A

problem—overconfidence.)
    Predictably, “stairs, ramps, and landings” was the most lively category, with almost two million startled victims, but in other respects dangerous objects were far more benign than their reputations might lead you to predict. More people were injured by sound-recording equipment (46,022) than by skate-boards (44,068), trampolines (43,655), or even razors and razor blades (43,365). A mere 16,670 overexuberant choppers ended up injured by hatchets and axes, and even saws and chainsaws claimed a relatively modest 38,692 victims.
    Paper money and coins (30,274) claimed nearly as many victims as did scissors (34,062). I can just about conceive of how you might swallow a dime and then wish you hadn’t (“You guys want to see a neat trick?”), but I cannot for the life of me construct hypothetical circumstances involving folding money and a subsequent trip to the ER. It would be interesting to meet some of these people.
    I would also welcome a meeting with almost any of the 263,000 people injured by ceilings, walls, and inside panels. I can’t imagine being hurt by a ceiling and not having a story worth hearing. Likewise, I could find time for any of the 31,000 people injured by their “grooming devices.”
    But the people I would really like to meet are the 142,000 hapless souls who received emergency room treatment for injuries inflicted by their clothing. What
can
they be suffering from? Compound pajama fracture? Sweatpants hematoma? I am powerless to speculate.
    I have a friend who is an orthopedic surgeon, and he told me the other day that one of the incidental occupational hazards of his job is that you get a skewed sense of everyday risks since you are constantly repairing people who have come a cropper in unlikely and unpredictable ways. (Only that day he had treated a man who had had a moose come through the windshield of his car, to the consternation of both.) Suddenly, thanks to Table No. 206, I began to see what he meant.
    Interestingly, what had brought me to the
Statistical Abstract
in the first place was the wish to look up crime figures for the state of New Hampshire, where I now live. I had heard that it is one of the safest places in America, and indeed the
Abstract
bore this out. There were just four murders in the state in the latest reporting year—compared with over 23,000 for the country as a whole—and very little serious crime.
    All that this means, of course, is that statistically in New Hampshire I am far more likely to be hurt by my ceiling or underpants—to cite just two potentially lethal examples—than by a stranger, and, frankly, I don’t find that comforting at all.

I did a foolish thing the other afternoon. I went into one of our local cafés and seated myself without permission. You don’t do this in America, but I had just had what seemed like a salient and important thought (namely, “There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube—always. Think about it”) and I wanted to jot it down before it left my head. Anyway, the place was practically empty, so I just took a table near the door.
    After a couple of minutes, the hostess—the Customer Seating Manager—came up to me and said in a level tone, “I see you’ve seated yourself.”
    “Yup,” I replied proudly. “Dressed myself too.”
    “Didn’t you see the sign?” She tilted her head at a big sign that said “Please Wait to Be Seated.”
    I have been in this café about 150 times. I have seen the sign from every angle but supine.
    “Oh!” I said innocently, and then: “Gosh, I didn’t notice it.”
    She sighed. “Well, the server in this section is very busy, so you may have to wait a while for her to get to you.”
    There was no other customer within fifty feet, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I had disregarded a posted notice and would have to serve a small sentence in purgatory in consequence.
    It would be entirely wrong to say that Americans love rules any more