Defying Gravity, aka Fail Blog #1

So, I'd been working on a post about Do's and Don'ts for when you have to go to the Emergency Room, but something is weird about it and I'm not sure it's that funny. I could make it a lot more funny, but to do so would require violating some professional boundaries and possibly HIPAA, so given that I like my job and hope to remain employed, I'm shelving it for now. (If you're interested, here's the take-away: If you want a pleasant, quick and medically helpful ER visit, don't lie, act right, and try really really hard not to shit your pants.) 

But fear not, friends! A post you shall have! My ER post got me thinking about my own numerous visits to Emergency Rooms over the years. I'm kind of a frequent flier:

Those of you who know me can attest that I am mythically prone to falling down and other acts of violent and dangerous uncoordination, the frequency and absurdity of which dwarf the mishaps and accidents of normal people. I deeply wish this were hyperbole. My body, pocket book, and self-esteem would all be in much better shape if I were just being dramatic here. But alas, I am not, and so I thought to myself, "Self, you have no dignity left in this arena. You lost that on a patch of ice in a parking lot back in 1998. Might as well just broadcast to the entire internet the magnitude of your klutzery." Lemonade out of lemons, kids.

So I identified a sampling of my most memorable fails, highlights from various ages and places, (although two of the fails are from college because, well, it's fucking college and frankly it's impressive that I made it out alive, what will all the tomfoolery, sleep deprivation, reckless abandon and recreational substance use.) I began to notice I was having a hard time narrowing down the list and was ultimately forced to admit that I could possibly create a whole series of posts on this topic and not run out of material. I add to the fail collection often, you see. There is even a good chance that I could acquire puncture wound or broken toe just in the course of writing this post. I tell you, the world is my obstacle course.

So, in the name of good story-telling and metering out my shame over time, a series it shall be. To start us off, I have identified a particularly embarrassing childhood fail. Let us begin...

Fail 1:  Bike Meets Brick Wall Fail, age 8

This fail is near and dear to my heart, as it is one of my earliest and possibly the first time I learned that with great physical calamity comes great humiliation. It started off innocently enough: I was riding my bike down at The Graded School, the large, old, brick school house at the end of my block. (It really was called The Graded School--the name was carved into the front of it. I always thought it was weird to have an adjective as a school name, but I guess that how they rolled in the olden days.) At the time, this school functioned as my town's junior high, so I wasn't old enough to attend, but I knew it well because I lived just a few doors away and all of us neighborhood kids played there regularly. We loved to roller skate and bike down "the hill," the paved drive that ran from the front parking lot along the left side of the building and opened up into the large paved playground area in the back. I use "playground" loosely here, as it primarily consisted of several old tractor trailer tires, a basket-less basket ball court, an open blacktop area salt and peppered with shards of broken glass, and an unobstructed embankment leading down to the leech-filled Passumsic River, which was prone to flood the entire area several times a year. In retrospect, the whole place was kind of a death trap, but in the 80's, this specimen of rural splendor was our neighborhood stomping grounds.

On the day in question, I was riding my bike up and down "the hill" pretending I was Laura Ingalls Wilder riding my horse. Pretending to be Laura Ingalls Wilder was an alarmingly popular activity of mine, and I was so good at it that I would sometimes go for days at a time pretending that I was away at "teacher's college" and my entire family were just the people who ran the boarding house I lived in while I pined to go home to Walnut Grove. Yeah. So I was pretty good at getting into character, which I believe accounts for my general lack of awareness in this fail.

I'm not sure where everyone else in the neighborhood was that day (maybe they fled the prairie) but I had been doing this horse-hill thing for about 20 minutes or so when I had a great idea: it was time to pull my horse into the barn for feeding! The Graded School was shaped like a large capital "I". The original school house was the top of the "I", and then a newer hallway-ish thing connected a large gymnasium addition at the back of the school, the bottom of the "I". The hill I was going up and down was the side of the "I", and the indent part, I was sure, was the barn. 

So, from the top of the hill I began to pedal, with the intention of veering sharply to the right half-way down to park in the barn. Sweet plan!

Except this: when it came time to turn, I was going too fast. My horse would not fucking whoa. I felt myself panicking but the course of my demise was set. I couldn't turn the required ninety-degrees and instead turned at about forty...and crashed, full speed, head-on, into the brick wall of the gymnasium.

I remember little about the impact other than the sound of my crumpling horse-bike, but I suspect my body hit the wall before bouncing back several feet and splaying all over the gravely blacktop, which I hit with a resounding thud to rival any child-body-on-pavement thud. I laid there for a minute and assessed: wind knocked out, head pain, searing knee and ankle, tingly elbow, feeling of utter shock and devastation. I also sensed that I had acquired a sampling of bloody, gravel-encrusted scrapes but I couldn't bring myself to move to check. Before I could muster the strength to lift my head, a figure appeared over me. It was Mrs. E. from across the street. She had heard me crying (was I crying??) and came to see what was the matter. She looked positively stricken. "My god, dear!" she said, so concerned, "what happened?"

Holy shit, people will want to know what happened! Oh my god! How on earth do I tell them that I essentially pedaled myself full-speed into a brick wall? That I was trying to put my fake horse in the fake barn? That I forgot to think about the mechanics of speed and turning and such? They will think I'm a fucking wackjob! That. Can't. Happen. Gaaaaaah!

And yet--perhaps because of head injury-- I couldn't think of a single reasonable lie to tell her that would explain this. There were no other kids around. There were no rogue kitties to swerve to avoid, no disorienting sun glare. I caved:

 I just let it go. I began--or perhaps continued-- to wail. Cried my fucking guts out. Poor Mrs. E.  She had two daughters a bit older that me, who I know for a fact were major contributors to the broken glass situation around here but likely had never propelled themselves into this building.  She gingerly lifted me up, gave me a once-over for protruding bones or severed arteries, and said she thought I "needed some ice." We collected a few pieces of debris--chunks of broken reflector , part of my gear shift lever--and walked me and my bike carcass home. 

Actually, technically she walked me to my neighbor's house because I didn't want her talking to my mom. I limped into the garage and threw my bike in a heap next to my sister's (We were not consistent kick-stand users in our family) before slinking in the back door and racing to the upstairs bathroom where I sullenly de-graveled my wounds before dabbing them all with a wet washcloth. I knew we didn't have any band-aids. My mother's first aid philosophy centered around the concept of cowboying up and the belief that any non-fatal injury could be healed by "rubbing it" or covering it with paper towels. After taking inventory of my scrapes, aches and at least one hematoma forming on the back of my head, I declared myself healthy enough to avoid disclosure of this incident to my mom and decided maybe it was time to curl up with a good Nancy Drew. I'd had enough Little House for one day.

Over the next few weeks, I will offer up more confessions of LEON's Top Fails in addition to my other material. I think it will be therapeutic. If nothing else, please please take this body of work as a giant, illustrated cautionary tale. Although, let's be honest: there is no prevention mechanism for the particular blend of Little House obsession, physics ignorance, and lack of planning that lead to this FAIL, nor for the many LEON eccentricities that conspire to erupt in all manner of physical nonsense. In any case, stay tuned for Fail #2: Dorm Steps Peach Snapple FAIL, coming soon...Cheers!

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