Brazil!

My wife came home from the long Labor Day weekend and dropped her pants right in front of me. No, she wasn't happy to see me.

She wanted to show me her bruise, which was on her leg and roughly the size and shape of Brazil and the color of meat that has been left out in the hot, hot, sun.

She had other bruises, too—a nasty one on her back where a rib was supposed to be and another on her hip.

I showed my compassion immediately by smirking and then laughing out loud.

See, my wife had driven something like 11 hours (five of which were spent on U.S. Highway 2 between Cut Bank and Browning to fix a flat tire) to attend the state O-Mok-See with her trusty horse, Chili Bean.

O-Mok-See is a Blackfeet term and roughly translates to "Oh-Man-am-I-Sore" in English.

Chili Bean is a 16-year-old quarterhorse. They call them quarterhorses because exactly one-fourth of the time they're predictable and well-behaved. The rest of the time, well, read on dear reader, read on.

At any rate, she and my daughters and some other friends had all hauled their horses over to Big Sandy for the state O-Mok-See to work on their bruises.

My wife came home the big wiener. Because on Saturday in the big first race, called "keyhole," she had what witnesses described later as a "spectacular wipeout."

"I actually heard you hit the ground," said a friend, who at the time was actually in a Port-a-Potty in Fort Benton, a mere 15 miles away.

The wife and horse were doing great in the first half of the race, the part where you race like heck down to the end. It was the turning around part that didn't go so well.

Chili Bean raced down to the end and then put the brakes on in a hurry, and the wife caught the horn on the saddle in a place where it's not good to catch the horn of a saddle and then flipped completely over in a mid-air somersault, landing on the poles that make the "keyhole," and then, eventually, the hard, hard, earth.

It was what we like to call around the Peterson household "the oooof heard round the world."

An EMT came running out and suggested she go to the hospital, but wife opted to take a nap in the front of the pickup instead.

She waited until Monday, when she could barely move, to go the doctor. He checked her out and laughed and told her that her pelvis may have separated from her backbone and, if it did, he'd have to wire the bones back together.

Then he went and played golf.

Two days later, we found out her back is just strained, but the Brazil bruise is quite tender and swollen and she's pretty sure she broke some ribs, which you can't do much about anyway.

So she hobbles around the house, and we take care of her as best as we can. We bring her tea and pillows and change the channel for her when she needs it. She's coming along. She keeps talking about getting back on that horse, and we wonder about the wisdom in that, at least until we've had time to shop for life insurance policies and work out a will.

But she goes back to those first few seconds before the crash.

"It was great," she says with a gleam in her eye. "We were going to win."