‘Do not get pinned under the bike!’

This was my first thought as I felt the motorcycle under me start to slide sideways in the gravel.  There would be no pulling out of this one, only damage control.  The next thought, as I kicked off the seat to get clear and took a Superman dive toward the road, was ‘stand up so they know you’re alright’, followed immediately by ‘sit down, you’re not alright’.

It wasn’t the first, nor last time I had dropped my entire frame on the two square inches of one kneecap, but it has been the only time I planted rocks in my elbow.  Both hurt significantly.  Thankfully, a nurse who lived nearby had just arrived at the same intersection, saw the accident, and went back to her house for an ice wrap.  She also called the authorities, and I got a $170 ticket for ‘failure to control vehicle’, on a temporary license, on Father’s day, on a bum knee.  There were two things the officer wasn’t permitted to do – she couldn’t waive the ticket, since an accident had been reported, and she couldn’t transport me to the hospital – so I rode on the back of Dad’s bike with my swollen leg straight out.

In the ER, the nurse did her job – scrubbing my open elbow to remove gravel & dirt that got planted almost to the bone.  I had but two choices sitting there, my leg throbbing & elbow screaming…  I could cry, or I could laugh.  Much to my mom’s frustration, I chose laughter, and every Bill Cosby joke I could think of.  Mom was concerned that they wouldn’t take my injuries seriously enough, I was concerned that allowing myself to whimper & flinch would cause the scrubbing to drag out more.  Clearly, I lived through it, and still have the marks to prove that the gravel wreck didn’t beat me.  It has, however, kept me from going after my motorcycle license again, so far.

I have taken the same perspective with most of my physical injuries, and several of my heartbreaks.  I remember walking into the living room after another bout with gravel, asking my grandmother if she “had something for a little girl who hurt her finger” – a fingernail ripped out from the second cuticle.  A few years later, the same finger was closed in a car door, the nail was torn out again, and I was focused on getting to the bathroom, wondering why I couldn’t take more than a step from the car.  They called it a “high resistance to pain” in my childhood, a dangerous blessing for the comparatively few who have it.  Mix that with a determination not to make too much of a less-than-deadly situation, and you have a person who recites Bill Cosby jokes while having rocks scrubbed out of an elbow.

You also have someone who quietly manages less obvious issues with a rehearsed smile and genuine, though somewhat distracted, concern for others – especially when they’re showing that same, familiar, rehearsed smile.  When the situation reaches crisis level, people such as myself finally speak up, usually to the great surprise of most, since there doesn’t tend to be a warning or lead-in.  We put our best management skills to the task, focus on damage control, stand up so everyone knows we’re alright, and sometimes we must quickly sit again.  Reality, after all, tends to be more determined than we are. However, this does not mean that it always wins.