OK, I get it. The governor of Colorado, Bill Ritter, is a big cyclist. So he takes a spill and breaks a few ribs, and like all of us who have been there, he wants to put a positive spin on things.
Yes he was wearing a helmet. Yes Lance the Man Himself tweeted the guv to get well soon.
But you can carry things a bit too far.
“He is joking and laughing,” spokesman Evan Dreyer said, according to the Denver Post.
Really? Laughing it up? On broken ribs?
Anyone who has had the distinct misfortune of breaking, or even bruising, just one rib, let alone a whole rack of ’em, knows the piercing, the excruciating, the feel like I’m fixin’ to DIE pain that encases one’s entire body like King Kong squishing a grape when even the tiniest little chuckle begins to form somewhere in the depths of one’s diaphragm.
THIS SHIT HURTS! YOU CAN’T LAUGH WHEN YOUR RIBS ARE BROKEN!
I suppose it’s possible that ill Bill is so doped up on pain killers he can actually … well, laugh still seems like too strong a word. Or maybe they’ve got him under nitrous oxide and he really can’t help himself. Perhaps, too, he’s so giddy over the fact he’s still alive despite the crash that he’s just on some kind of silly self-flagellational high. Maybe when he laughs, it’s like Hannibal the Cannibal in “Silence of the Lambs.” It’s a quiet little stone-faced, motionless kind of laugh.
But we doubt all of the above. We think the gov’s aide is just winging it to let the breathless electorate know Ritter’s no quitter, and he’ll fight through any adversity to serve his adoring public.
Still, if we’d been interviewing the good Mr. Dreyer and he fed us that line, we would’ve sought a bit of clarification, if only out of respect to the many Americans who have suffered rib injuries in their sorry existences. We wish Gov. Ritter the best, but we won’t be telling him any knee-slappers any time soon.