Just wondering ...

I don’t plan on making a habit of using this blog to distribute the many amazing things which circulate on the Internet, but this one caught my eye. It made me laugh, which is always a good thing, and also led me to a couple of questions, which I pose below.

Last week Sally was reading her home town newspaper (the Sault Star) to see if anyone she knew had won the lottery, been sent to jail, died, whatever, when she called me over.

“Read this” she commanded. So I did.

The title of the article pulled me in.

Workers’ compensation for woman injured having sex

An Australian woman who was injured while having sex in her hotel room during a business trip will get workers’ compensation.

Justice John Nicholas ruled that the woman, who was not named, was injured during the course of her employment, the website news.com.au reported.

Nicholas said if the woman had been injured playing cards in her room, she would have been entitled to compensation. Getting injured during sex should be no different.

The woman was injured in Nov. 2007 when she and a male friend returned to her hotel room after dinner. In his statement, the man said the two were “going hard” when a glass light fixture above the bed came away from the wall and fell on the woman’s face. He was unsure whether they bumped the light, or it just fell off.

The woman was seeking workers’ compensation for facial and psychological injuries but her claim was denied by her employer.

Don’t believe me? You can check out the original here: http://www.saultstar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3539786

Now this is one of those stories that raises more questions than it answers. At first glance it’s just one of those Believe it or not moments … what is the world coming to, that sort of thing.

But when you think about it a little more, the important bits have been left out. For example:

·         With what part of whose anatomy might the light have been bumped, and how?

·         How might you get injured playing cards?

The first leaves room for conjecture, and perhaps practice, the second provides even more food for thought.

There’s a famous combination of cards in poker which is called the Dead Man’s Hand. According to legend, this consists of two pairs (aces and eights) held by Wild Bill Hickok when he was murdered in Deadwood, South Dakota, in 1876. There were two spades and two clubs.

 
There are many stories as to what the fifth card was, and it doesn’t really matter, although the accepted version (according to Hickok’s biographer, cited on Wikipedia) is that it was the queen of clubs.

My point is this. If the lady on whom the light fell had indeed been injured playing cards in her hotel room, perhaps during a quick game of strip poker before the main event, what would that hand have been called?

Just wondering … comments welcome!