Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Story #2: Another in a series of stupid, stupid things...



This next story embodies the danger that I am to myself, rather than the danger presented to me by the rest of the world.

It was a Thursday night in early December, 2002. It was snowing. I was walking from one bar to another with a friend of mine, and we were running and sliding on the icy streets. We were having a drunken, gleeful time. I said to my friend, "This is fun, but seriously, dude, I should get some better shoes for the winter. I'm gonna fall and break my neck."

SECONDS later, I mean SECONDS, I was laid out on my back with my nimble-footed friend looking down at me. He helped me up and I faced this garage you see above. It was the second thing I saw when I embarked on what would become a two year Odyssey of pain and disfigurement. For it was not my neck that was broken, but my arm. And it was a tricky break. One that the doctors could not initially set properly. When my first cast came off, my arm was crooked and would not make all the motions that arms are supposed to make. It didn't hurt, but it looked hideous. My only option was a painful surgery that involved eight screws and a chunk of my hip and ten additional weeks in a cast.

As I am a man who desires to not work too much, I could not afford said surgery, and so I had to wait months to be enrolled in a state funded insurance program that would cover my medical bills. For two years my mangled arm drew the attention of anyone who had ever chipped a bone, or stubbed a toe, and I heard hundreds of testimonials of pain and suffering and "so-and-so's wrist can predict the weather."

By now it may seem like I've lost the narrative thread with this interlude, but I promise you: the next story will tie it all together. Also, I recently added two more to my collection of internal screws.

And so the totem for this story is a screw.

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