 Editorial
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5-11 -04
Black and Blue
at 50
I was going to do one of my “Travel
to Virginia” columns this month,
but something else happened that
seems to occupy my mind lately. On
Sunday April the 25th, I turned 50
years old.
I was pretty much okay with the whole
thing and wasn’t going to get
freaked out about it or anything. However,
it turns out that I am having a tough
time with things that I generally took
for granted a few years back. One thing
is that I am hurting myself more and
more as I do things. Is this me being
clumsy or what? I don’t know,
maybe I have just been prone to hurt
myself all my life and am just noticing
it more now that I don't heal as fast.
It may have begun on Good Friday.
I was riding in a car with a buddy
of mine.
We
had
just stopped at a traffic light when
WHAM!, we were hit from the rear by
another driver. We were hit so hard
that my glasses flew off of my face
and bounced off of the windshield.
Ouch.
As a result, we both had sore backs
and necks. Luckily for me, I managed
to keep from further injuring myself
that day and recovered pretty quickly
from that accident. The person who
hit us was an uninsured
migrant farm worker.
The day of my birthday, my buddy Tom
(the
one driving the car when we got hit)
invited me out to a chain of lakes
here in
Florida to spend the day burning
up the water on his SeaDoo®. In
a few hours, I was pretty tired but
had been having lots
of fun
on
this
SeaDoo® when
I decided to go up a channel and see
what was up there. I spied a dead alligator
floating belly up and stopped the watercraft
I was riding to have a closer look.
If you’ve ever ridden one of
these things, then you know they are
unstable while sitting still, idling.
So there I am, engine putting,
me gawking, when Mr. Speedboat Rider
comes
tearing up the channel, creating
a wake that knocks me off of the SeaDoo®.
As I go under and start to resurface,
the SeaDoo® comes down off of the
wake and nails me right in the forehead,
removing a patch of skin about 1 inch
in diameter riding atop a goose egg
bump. Ouch.
About a week later, I was shopping
for an a/c unit, having decided to
air
condition my garage. I came across
a great deal on a 14,500 BTU unit that
was perfect for the job. The smaller
units couldn’t do the job as
well because they have smaller cooling
fins
that would not clear the 8-inch thickness
of the garage wall. Well, if you have
ever seen a 14,500 BTU air conditioner,
you know this sucker is huge. So there
I was at Lowe’s seeking to purchase
this thing and the store manager calls
one of the store associates to get
this thing off of the shelf for me.
The store associate, Jose, came to
the aisle where the a/c units are and
I’ll bet you he didn’t
weigh more than 125 pounds. The air
conditioner is on a shelf about chest
high and I am thinking this thing will
crush this guy if he even manages to
pull it off of the shelf. So, like
a dummy, I offered to give him a hand
taking it off of the shelf and putting
it on the cart.
Giving him a hand is almost exactly
what I did. As soon as it cleared the
shelf, Jose and his end of the air
conditioner went straight to the floor.
Of course I was still trying to hold
my end of this monster. Unfortunately,
the momentum of Jose going down to
the floor swung the a/c unit back toward
the shelf and the only thing between
the air conditioner and the shelf was
my hand. Ouch.
That same weekend Tom
came over to help me install
the air conditioner into the garage
wall.
Now,
installing
the a/c unit into a garage wall involves
measuring the size of the unit and
cutting a hole in the block wall the
appropriate size. So we cut this hole
and we knocked out the chunks of masonry
from the inside, leaving only
the outside layer to do. Good ol' Tom
goes outside while I remain in the
garage
looking on the floor for
the other hammer. Tom rears back and
gives the concrete a good whack,
sending a chunk of concrete through
the wall and into the garage, where
it whacks
me in the head behind
my left ear, just about knocking me
out. Ouch.
Jump to a week later. My left hand
is still swollen, my head still hurts
and my wrist is still sore. I went
to open a valve at one of the water
plants with the same left hand and
was stung by a scorpion. It hurt so
fast that at first I thought I got
hit by an electric shock. Last Tuesday
my wrist was so sore I had to wear
a brace on it to keep me from inadvertently
bending it. I thought maybe the scorpion
venom affected my joints and caused
my wrist to swell but, who knows for
sure about such stuff. Ouch.
Wednesday at the end of the workday,
I pulled up to my last water plant.
I put the Dodge truck into park and
got out, leaving it running so I could
hear the radio. I did a few things
around the plant and then stepped inside
to run a chlorine test on the water.
Then I heard some leaves crunching
outside the doorway. I looked up and
saw a white Dodge truck rolling across
the grass. I thought at first that
one of the guys I work with was pulling
up to the water plant to shoot the
bull with me. I got a sick feeling
in my stomach when I realized it was
MY TRUCK that had somehow slipped into
gear and was starting across the grass.
In a panic, I raced out of the building
to catch the truck and tripped, falling
to the ground. I saw my right ring
finger make a sideways “L” shape
in a direction your finger does not
normally go. It felt like I broke my
finger. As I lay on the ground, holding
my finger with my other hand, I suddenly
became concerned that the truck’s
rear tire would run over my head. I
rolled out of the way and scrambled
to my feet and managed to catch the
truck before it hit something.
They sent me to the emergency room
where I found out my finger had been
dislocated (until I had squeezed it
back into place), sprained and fractured.
Yesterday, I took off the splint they
put on my hand so that I could use
it. My finger is black and blue and
swollen. (It also interferes with typing.)
Ouch.
I have to say that turning 50 was
rougher on me than any previous birthday.
If the next 50 years are going to be
like this, I am in real trouble.
Jack
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