A chance observation of a billboard for a personal-injury law firm launches deep thought (OK, maybe just a rant) about personal injuries and website proliferation.
Injured in a hotel?
If a billboard can blare, this one does.
Injured in a hotel?
All acid colours and blocky lettering, it looms loudly above the Vegas strip, ‘drawing focus’ as they say in dramatic circles. Hard to ignore, impossible to miss, it is, of course, advertising a firm specializing in personal injury law. I know this area of the law the same way I know all law: from watching TV. Commercials, in this case, rather than the crime-and-punishment dramas that have formed the core of my studies. But even with my in-depth background, this sub-specialty of hotel injuries is new to me.
I assume that this billboard is not referring to the intentional injuries that occur when Lucky and Unlucky (in cards or in love) happen to intersect in a hotel. But in a city with about 150,000 hotel rooms, are the unintentional injuries sufficient to keep the phone ringing and the email pinging?
Before this very minute I have not given much thought to the hazards inherent in hotels, but now I ponder the accidents waiting to happen. Scalding hands under reverse-plumbed faucets. Twisting ankles on charming but treacherous flagstone sidewalks, which, now I come to think of it, I saw happen just yesterday. Banging heads after slipping on inexplicably slick poolside tiles. Squishing entire selves between overly enthusiastic elevator doors. Breaking teeth after falling up or down stairs taken to avoid enthusiastic elevators.
Injured in a hotel?
My goodness. With all the things that can go wrong, how have I never been injuredinahotel? How have I never had occasion to visit their website: injuredinahotel.com? As this eyesore of a billboard blessedly fades from view, I wonder idly whether these folks are dedicated specialists, or whether they would help me if I were injuredinastore/whileshopping, or injuredinawaterreclamationarea/whilebirdwatching.
I wonder, too, whether some specialists focus on injury type rather than injury locale. Are there bangedyourhead.com, brokenyourtooth.com, and squishedyourself.com sites for comparing injuries with those similarly afflicted and maybe even joining a class action suit to get full value from your misfortune?
Do some specialists go further, not adding insult to injury but conflating the two: a natural extension of our politically correct times? Â Are there beeninsulted.com and hadyourfeelingshurt.com sites for commiseration and maybe just a little compensation?
Injured in a hotel?
No, I have not been injuredinahotel, at least not so far, and it’s clear I’ve led a charmed life in other ways, too. I have had no occasion to visit any of these sites. Not so far.
But there is, they say, a first time for everything. As we bump our way back to our hotel in our shock-transmitting shuttle, unencumbered by seatbelts even on the freeway, I ponder the relative probability of being injuredinabus as opposed to inahotel. I’m thinking it’s a whole bunch higher, and I’m glad to know that there is undoubtedly a website for that, too, with a trained specialist just waiting to hear from me.
I bet your spellchecker had a hemorrhage with that column!
Jim
Jim T – Well, as an(other) editor friend of mine insists, the “spelling checker” did almost choke. Sometimes, though, you just have to go with what you know in your heart to be right.
LOL — made my day! Too funny.
Quick — buy those alternate domain names.
Barbara – I dunno – once one started buying, where would one stop? Just to illustrate the range of injury and the degree of specialization, think of an injury alluded to here in the Sonoran Desert by my birdwatching mentors – something to do with wandering through the desert or even along a trail and not looking at one’s feet. I haven’t yet Googled bitbysnakewhilebirdwatching.com, but there likely ought to be a site like that.
And, of course, John might have occasion to use bitbysquirrelwhilepainting.com.
They do get fiesty! and chitter away at him, waiting impatiently
for him to throw out more nuts. Or they bang the little dish he puts them in. Or, they go up the tree over his head and toss down little branches they have bit off. Now there’s a dot com
Barbara – I can just see the squirrels tossing twigs at John. I guess they haven’t seen Oliver Twist: Please, sir, may I have some more?
First: my sympathies for having endured all that is Las Vegas. Outside the window on my only visit (to the World Of Concrete Expo (Steady your nerves. Breathe deeply.)) was a similar sign: “You’ve suffered enough. Call 357-PAIN”, and the 50 times life-size image of he who, for a percentage of the take, will ameliorate that pain.
I, for one, see life as nothing more than an opportunity to sue someone, and I’m ever so grateful that there are websites that make the job so much easier. Bless them all. You’ll be hearing from my people about this sore wrist I got typing this reply. With the proceeds I hope to have a protracted stay in LV. TongueStuckToCheekWhileWritingIsabel.com.
Ted – I knew I didn’t nail down enough domain names when I started this blogging thing! Dagnab it. But you should know that I did meet some helpful folks at fightmefightmygang.com . . . As for the World of Concrete Expo, well, words fail me. OK, not quite: The things we don’t know.