In the New Yorker...

[Front-Ranger]

Wow, I had no idea! I could have been sending healing thoughts! Was it your dominant arm?

[serious crayons]

Wow, I had no idea! I could have been sending healing thoughts! Was it your dominant arm?

No, thank god. I should have mentioned that another thing I was lucky not to break was my neck. My son, standing behind me, feared that was going to happen because I smashed my face into the corner of this brick wall at an awkward angle. As I plunged face-forward the thought going through my mind was, will I have broken glass in my eyes when my glasses break? But that didn't even happen!

Plus, I was told not to drive for eight weeks so I got out of eight weeks of working Saturday shifts. You need to be able to drive in case you have to go out to some breaking news event. So the first week I missed having to write a story about a woman who killed her son with a shotgun and stuffed him into the trunk of her car. Later, I missed having to do one where a family of five was pulled out of a lake because the suicidal husband had killed the wife and three kids.

Now they've taken me off Saturdays permanently! So I have a M-F schedule again instead of T-S. And yesterday I didn't have to do a story about a guy who stabbed four young people, killing one and seriously injuring others, who were riding innertubes down a river near the Wisconsin border.

And in PT, my therapist said I could get PT for the back pain I've been suffering on and off for 20 years and insurance would cover it.

So it was an unfortunate minor accident but some good came out of it so overall I consider myself fairly lucky.

Get this -- I had just the day before it happened I told someone I hadn't broken a bone since second grade. Uh-oh, I thought, I'll jinx myself, so I knocked on a wooden table. The question is, does my experience prove that knocking on wood does not work? Or can I attribute my could-be-worse experience to the wood knocking?

[Front-Ranger]

I can answer that by quoting you! "Coincidence does not imply causation." Did I get that right? 

[southendmd]

Oh, Katy, I had no idea what you went through.  What an awful ordeal.  I'm glad you're on the mend. 

[Jeff Wrangler]

Oh, have I not mentioned that? I was out with my son on Mother's Day when I tripped and fell face-first into a brick wall. Broke my arm at the shoulder and an orbital bone. I was lucky -- didn't break jaw, teeth, nose, skull or even glasses. I've been doing PT at a place which is conveniently located at street level immediately below my apartment. Both bones are pretty close to healed now.

As usual I was clueless. I'm glad to hear you're pretty well mended.

I'll take it the harmonica is OK, too. ...

[Jeff Wrangler]

So the first week I missed having to write a story about a woman who killed her son with a shotgun and stuffed him into the trunk of her car. Later, I missed having to do one where a family of five was pulled out of a lake because the suicidal husband had killed the wife and three kids.

And yesterday I didn't have to do a story about a guy who stabbed four young people, killing one and seriously injuring others, who were riding innertubes down a river near the Wisconsin border.

Both of those stories made national news.

[Front-Ranger]

Is it always this violent in your area?? 

[serious crayons]

I can answer that by quoting you! "Coincidence does not imply causation." Did I get that right? 

Well, my usual saying is "correlation does not mean causation," because I'm usually referring to research that finds a correlation but doesn't control for all the factors that could cause it (e.g. "parenting" studies that don't take genetic relationships into account).

But in this case, coincidence -- or is it?? -- is definitely appropriate!

[serious crayons]

Oh, Katy, I had no idea what you went through.  What an awful ordeal.  I'm glad you're on the mend.

Thank you, Paul! I really do feel like I was pretty lucky. For a while there my face was swollen and half looked like it had been brushed with a purple paint. Prince would have approved but most people ran away screaming. It didn't hurt, though, partly because it was completely numb. Now sensation is coming back but it looks pretty close to normal.

As for the arm, that DID hurt for a while, but not much at this point. And I have most of the movement back. My ortho doc was impressed!

[serious crayons]

Is it always this violent in your area?? 

No, it's weird! Obviously the mom killing her son (following a custody battle) is a crazy one-off, as was the dad committing suicide and killing his family. Those are probably coincidence =/= causation.

But there's also been a wave of shootings as well as carjackings that are sometimes accompanied by physical assaults. And a FB friend just posted that she held a gathering at her house and when the guests left in a group three guys pulled up, pointed guns at their heads and stole purses, wallets, phones.

We're a long way from New Orleans in the early '90s, which peaked at 450 murders one year, in a city only a bit bigger than Minneapolis. In New Orleans, almost everybody I knew (besides me) had been mugged or worse at some point, including my husband carrying our 1-year-old in a backpack at 7 p.m. on a lovely summer evening.

Last year there were 96 murders in Minneapolis. Speaking of coincidences, that's exactly how many Denver had, according to Google. The cities are roughly the same size, although Minneapolis (not counting St. Paul) is slightly bigger.