Crash, Bang, Wallop
I had my fair share of cuts and scrapes when I was a kid. Two of these incidents stand out more than the others; the arm breakage and the hit and run.
When I was about 10, I was practicing a dance routine, did a kick, hit my head, slipped and fell on my arm. Quite the sequence of events, I know. It hurt like hell. I ran downstairs, crying and my mum comforted me by sticking a pack of frozen peas on my arm, as she did with all my injuries. There wasn’t much time to do anything else. We had to be at a friend’s house for lunch that day. And so we went.
During the day my arm throbbed and became increasingly difficult to move. We were out all day, got back in the evening. Mama shoved frozen peas on it again to take the swelling down a bit. I went to bed, but by midnight, I could take the pain no longer. I woke up my parents and my mum took me to the hospital. We get to Accident and Emergency and I tell the nurse my arm hurts. She takes one look at it and says:
‘That would be because it’s broken sweetheart’
They sat us in the waiting room to wait for the doctor. With an arm that had been broken for about 15 hours now and it being the middle of the night, I was pretty exhausted. Five hours later, as the ass crack of dawn began to shine through, we were still waiting in that room. When they finally called my name and said I’d have to have surgery to manipulate my arm, I completely lost my shit. I was hysterical. They got me on a bed, I was kicking and screaming. They gave me something to sedate me, but it didn’t work too well, so they gave me some more.
Surgery commenced and my mum waited outside. Eventually, a doctor emerged from the room. My mum asked how I was doing. ‘She’s fine,’ said the doctor. ‘She’s just not waking up.’ Needless to say, this did not calm my mother down any. Due to that over-sedation, I was just enjoying some extra nap time. I came to a few hours later, cast on my arm, a little groggy, but good for the most part. I was more miffed that the frozen peas didn’t cure me – they seemed to work for everything else.
About a year after that, at the start of the summer, we were having a barbeque and I was going to run across the street to invite one of the neighbours. All was going well until half way across the street, I got hit by a car. I bounced right off the bumper and landed on my ass (if you’ve ever done that, you know it HURTS!). I let out a scream. The driver got out, my parents came running out of the house. Amid all the confusion, I tried to get up and walk it off, but my leg didn’t really want to cooperate with the program and I hit the deck again. My dad swiped me up, piled me in the car and drove like a bat out of hell down to the hospital. Luckily, nothing was broken and despite my dazed-like state since that day, I did not maintain any head injuries. My knee, however, did take the brunt of the fall and was pretty messed up. I was sent home on crutches.
That night, as we sat around, trying to take in the day’s events, there was a knock at the door. My dad opened it and it was the driver who hit me. They brought flowers and chocolates (for the record, an eleven year old could give a crap about flowers. Can a girl get a New Kids on the Block poster? A Vanilla Ice CD? Something?) They came over to apologise and see how I was doing. My parents told them I’d be on crutches for a bit, but for the most part, it was just shock. They were relieved. But then they got right down to the business of the day:
They asked for money to fix the dent I’d left in their car when they hit me.
Yeah, seriously.
True story.
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Tags: accident prone, frozen peas
