George W. Bush did us all a favour this week with his public display of the injuries sustained when he fell off his couch. Couch-related accidents, especially those involving men, are almost certainly under-reported. In fact the average male, explaining a head wound at a hospital emergency department, would sooner claim to have been beaten by his wife than admit falling off the sofa while watching television. Frank McNally reports.
The conspiracy of silence includes health and safety officials, who never mention the problem either. This despite the fact that the known risks of sofa-based television-viewing are often increased - in a situation where the occupant is already dangerously relaxed - by beer intake. And although we live in a litigious age, when every household appliance carries warnings along the lines of "this microwave cooker is not suitable for drying hair", you can still be sold a couch without a word of caution, even in the US. Not for much longer, I suspect.
This is not the first time we've been indebted to the Bush family. Many of us can remember where we were in 1992 when we saw the shocking footage of the then US president, George Bush Sr, throwing up on the prime minister of Japan at a state banquet in Tokyo. And while one naturally sympathised with Mr Bush - who would have been extensively briefed beforehand on how to avoid giving offence to the famously-polite Japanese - one had to be less than human not to feel a certain relief.
After all, most people worry about committing a faux pas in pressurised social situations: using the wrong cutlery at a posh dinner party, or wiping our shoes on the host family's pet, or whatever. But after the Tokyo incident - which is still the world record for a faux pas - we could all relax. Nothing we were ever likely to do would come close to what the leader of the free world had just done.
The fact that George Jr was watching football when the couch accident happened is no surprise. Those of us who watch a lot of TV sport will have had accidents of one kind or another over the years. A common one is when, drinking a hot beverage but unable to take your eyes off the screen, you raise the cup to where you think your mouth is and suddenly, as prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa would say, it's all over your lap.
Injuries from falling are more unusual, admittedly. The nearest I've come was while watching the 1985 English Grand National, when Mister Snugfit, on which I had £5 to win, was caught in the dying moments by the cruelly-named 50-1 outsider, Last Suspect.
From the edge of the couch, I fell despairingly to my knees, forgetting it was a tiled floor and slightly aggravating an old football injury.
It's not quite a head wound, I know. Still, after the George Bush incident, all sofa-based sports enthusiasts will now feel a little taller, even in the slumped position. Indeed, without wishing to reopen wounds, real or metaphoric, caused by last week's column (one woman who wrote claims I've caused an upsurge in vacuum-cleaner assaults on husbands), we'll be looking for a little more respect from now on.
AS if watching sport is not dangerous enough, many of us continue to pursue the ultimate thrill: by participating in it, in some shape or form. My own shape and form have both degenerated over the years, for example. But this hasn't stopped me taking part in a long-running weekly indoor soccer game with friends, many of whom, like myself, are now playing in defiance of time and medical advice.
The fact is that, with proper care, you can indefinitely postpone certain once-inevitable effects of age - maturity, to mention just one. And indeed, we were remarking last week that our game has of late become, if anything, more competitive - or "violent", to use the term preferred by one guest player. Our feeling is that it adds to the enjoyment when we reflect afterwards that, miraculously, nobody has been hospitalised.
Injuries are mercifully rare, and the relief was particularly palpable after one recent game, during which feelings ran high, and skin and (thinning) hair were flying. Realising someone was going to get hurt, eventually, we decided to tone it down a bit.
But then, a couple of days later, one of the survivors strained his back while lifting his child at a bottle bank (no, he wasn't putting her in - she was depositing the bottles), and is now out for some weeks.
Which just goes to show, we never know when injury will strike. The only consolation, as we take to the sofa for another busy weekend of TV sport, is that at least we're all a little more conscious of the risks.
fmcnally@irish-times.ie