They should put a warning label on those new Stouffer’s Cheeseburger Mac cups. One that reads: Caution, Frozen Mac and Cheese Cups Can Cause Physical Injury if It Should Roll Out of Your Freezer and Drop on Your Bare Foot.

Ouch!

That’s what happened to me this morning as I opened the freezer to fetch a Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowl. In doing so, the Mac and Cheese cup plummeted several feet and landed like a rock on my fleshy bare left foot. And it left a mark!

Now I don’t typically go strutting around the house in my bare feet, mind you. Not after my brother walked into the leg of a stationary bicycle in the middle of the night this past spring and promptly broke his little toe. And especially not while our house is a disaster zone of clutter. No, I usually wear my sneakers (slippers provide no more protection than socks, really, which is to say, none at all.) But for some reason, today I defied the gods and strolled into the kitchen sans socks, slippers or sneakers.

And I paid the price.

Fortunately, the frozen food cup landed on the top of my foot and not on one of my toes. Otherwise I might be off to have an X-Ray of a broken appendage like my brother did on his toe. Not that the hospital was able to do anything for my brother’s broken toe, by the way. All they did was wrap it up with tape against one of his straighter toes and send him on his way with a $900 hospital bill to go with.

(So what do you think hurt more in the end? Hospital bill or broken toe?)

I lucked out. I only suffered a small red mark and a stinging feeling around my wound, which has since subsided. No ice packs, broken appendage tape or emergency room visit needed. It probably won’t even leave a scar, so I won’t be able to make up a neat shark story like Brody and Quint in Jaws. Dang it all.

I can at least share my harrowing experience with my reading audience. And, since this is a blog about the writing life, here’s the lesson to be gleaned from all of this: Real life incidents are sometimes stranger than fiction.

I see this experience as perfect fodder for a quirky character in one of my books who goes around wearing steel-toed boots wherever he goes, even in the middle of the night to raid the fridge. Maybe he even sleeps with them on.

Hey, sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up!