In harm’s way

I often hear various very strange stories about how people get the various very strange injuries that they have to suffer through. A close family friend told us a tale many years ago that, even today, tops the very strange list: He dislocated his jaw as he guffawed at a bad joke. He did tell us not to tell anyone else about it, but since I figure that he will probably never read this and has probably forgotten what he told us all those years ago. He would also fall of his scooter at regular intervals, breaking sundry parts of his irascible self, but recovered quickly with many stories about the incident and its fallout, all of which had us – collectively as a family and as separate individuals with degrees of wickedness in our senses of humour- in inevitable giggles.

But, in all that, I grew up to better him in many ways, perhaps because I was well trained, since he was, for all purposes, an ‘Uncle’, perhaps closer in the non-blood relationship to us than blood was. So, even as I fell out of a tree (perhaps the only time I ever climbed into one) and out of window onto some shards of broken glass, got bit by a small friend and crawled over the pieces of my shattered milk-bottle – all at different ages, I hastily add – I learned that a scar or two adds character, and a certain knowledge that to be hurt means to suffer pain and that, in turn, means a certain curtailment of activity, forcibly by one parent or both, and by the injury itself.

But it was only when I was in college that I did things in spectacular style, a style that has now become almost a signature. I rarely got hurt, but when I did, the world sat up and took notice. Perhaps the most interesting even was when I cracked a bone in my hand on the microwave, a story that I think I have told before. But there have been other equally esoteric ways of inflicting damage on myself that could use some re-telling and re-living.

Consider the time I fell down the stairs. I was in college in Long Island, New York, lived on the first floor up steep and sharp iron stairs. It was winter. I wore three-inch spike heeled suede boots. It was the freeze after a snowstorm had been melted by rain. I was in a hurry. Add all that up and the outcome is totally predictable – I slid on a patch of black ice, down a couple of stairs, managed to clutch precariously to the railing and my dignity, stood upright for a brief moment, then lost my feet, landed painfully upon my fundament, my back slamming against a stair edge, my head connecting rather violently with another. I lay there, sprawled, while the friend I was rushing to meet ran up, slid balletically close to me and over my head and managed to retain the dignity that I had lost, haul me up and keep us both standing at the same time. I was shouted at, driven post-haste to the infirmary and examined for bruises (a-plenty), concussion (very slight) and sanity (doubtful), all the while with my ears ringing from shock and pain and the combined lectures of my friend, the nurse and the lady who played the role of my local mother who was called on the phone as a back-up. Of course, I never wore those boots again.

And then there was the time I stabbed myself in the hand with a broken Petri dish. I was at home making Sunday dinner, having exiled both parents from the kitchen. I needed a small round flat plate – the best we had was a large size Petri dish. I was taking it out of the cupboard where it was stored when my phone rang. Determined not to have anyone else bothered, I jerked upright, miscalculated the trajectory of the route from cupboard to counter-top, managed to slam the dish against the top of the shelf, watched it shatter and then ran to catch the phone. It was only when I saw a small red puddle form near my foot that I realised that there was a fairly large piece of glass sticking straight up from my palm, with many other slivers keeping it company alongside. I picked out as much as I could and spent the next few months feeling nasty prickings through my hand. It was some time later that a doctor friend of mine dug into my palm with a needle and scalpel and found tiny shards that had stayed with me as a sort of macabre souvenir.

These days I am more careful. And slower. After all, though my physiotherapist loved telling me that there was “no pain, no gain”, I have learned that pain has no gain. And I rather live avoiding it.