Accidents Will Happen But Only Hit & Run

Chulita, one of my very favorite bloggers has asked me to post about an accident I mentioned in a comment I made on her post about an accident she was in many years ago with her baby daughter. As I was mulling it over I realized that the context of my accident mentioned in the comment, life changing as it was, may have been mistaken as something more recognizably devastating like a car accident.

The thing that struck me most about her post was the way she described that terrifying slow motion, you know you're in trouble, holy shit fuck, please Baby Jesus don't let me die, moments. The ones you have right after the realization that a possibly fatal and certainly bodily injuring mistake has been made, and right before the impact.

The big life changing accident that I had, had none of that. One moment I was standing and the next moment I was face planted in gravel watching tiny red spiders crawling around on my index finger. I began to stand up and dust myself off, but stopped short when I looked over at my friends, who were gaping at me in horror.

When I had this accident I was 19. I remember all of the events of the day very clearly as it began as one of the best days of my young adult life. I was on my first kind-of date with a boy I found intensely fascinating. He was in a band, he wrote short stories, and he wore a leather jacket and a Skinny Puppy t-shirt in exactly the correct way that any private school educated punk boy would in 1987. The first night that I met him, without ever speaking to me he whisper-sang a song in my ear and gave me his phone number. I think I'm still blushing from it. I had never been the object of such forwardness and overt flirtation before and the song was I've Got A Crush On You (Sweetie Pie). I'm a huge Gershwin fan from way back.

I sang back to him "I like a Gershwin tune, how about you?" And so it went. I took his picture that night and I still have it in an old shoebox, along with the mix tape he made for me. I'm fairly certain it was June 19th.

I called him the next day, a Sunday and the first time I had ever called a boy (I was a very shy and a late bloomer), and we made plans to "hang out" that night with a couple of our other friends as young people are often prone to do. I think a real date involving meeting of parents and picking up at the front door would have given me apoplexy (besides, he didn't have a car). My friend Dan J looked upon this as a golden opportunity to "hang out" with his latest crush girl (we'll call her CG), and so me, Dan J, CG, CG's brother, and the Fascinating Boy all went out carousing in downtown Columbus.

Downtown Columbus on any given Sunday in 1987 was a vast teenage wasteland. There was nothing to do because it was, if I remember correctly, the one night of the week that Crazy Mama's was closed (if you lived in Columbus in the 80's, were young and remotely happening you've heard of it). But for that very reason it was a great place to hang out because there was no one there. No grown-ups or cops. We would hang out at what is now called Battelle Riverfront Park where there were paddle boat docks and a long expanse of crumbling concrete river bank to frolic upon and make teen-age merry in our small city goth-punk way. The paddle boats are long gone and have been replaced with a replica of Christopher Columbus's Santa Maria.

The crumbling concrete riverbank has been fenced off and is now planted with with many trees and shrubs. Probably because of me. At the time, because of the accessibility and the way the concrete was laid out like a welcome mat, you could very easily climb the rusty ironwork (a ladder really) to the railroad bridge that spans the Olentangy river. It was almost like the city invited you to climb it. So that is exactly what we did, although (oddly enough) we had plans later to go to the Drexel and see The River's Edge.

You may be thinking at this point that the young 19 year old lady was hit by a train. Alas, no. Nothing so exciting as that. The boys, except for the Fascinating Boy (he had common sense too), really did most of the climbing and swinging from the tracks like monkey bars over the water. My accident occurred as we were leaving.

I started to slide on the concrete crumble and I must've braced myself pretty hard because I couldn't imagine falling and making a fool of myself in front of the Fascinating Boy. I braced myself too hard because (here it comes) my leg snapped. It snapped in such a way that the bone was sticking out. A compound fracture. I don't remember the actual fall.

I remember the loud echoing crack. I remember coming to and that my face and hands hurt. I remember my face was bleeding and had gravel stuck in my cheek and that little tiny red spiders living in the gravel started to crawl on my hand. I remember the looks on the faces of my friends and the moment that CG started to scream. I remember laughing and trying to get up and looking down and seeing that the ankle of my jeans looked funny. I remember saying to my friends, "Did you fuckin' hear that? Did you hear me break my leg? I think my leg is broken." I remember the stupid red spiders. I didn't cry.

Fascinating Boy and Dan J ran to the downtown police headquarters, about half a block away from the stupidness that had just occurred on the train bridge and the SWAT team, being the only rescue source currently available came to dig me out of the gravel and take me to the hospital. They put me in one of those basket things on ropes. I remember that young master Fascinating Boy, like a total gentleman, held my hand the entire time.

I had to drop out of college (summer classes had just started) and spent the rest of my summer confined in my parents home (it was my home too, although I never felt like it), in my bed and on crutches. This was also the summer I started chain smoking. I would crutch to the pantry and steal my mothers cigarettes when she was at work and spend my afternoons smoking and reading library books.

I spent the rest of my life, until a few years ago, in pain. When I dropped out of school I also got dropped from my parents insurance and any sad job I had after that wouldn't insure me. Pre-existing condition. So the 7 pins and plate implanted in my leg that were supposed to be removed the next year, never were. They remained semi-visible under my skin holding my leg together until about 1997 when I finally was insured properly and could afford to get treatment for the arthritis that had set in and eventually wore away every stitch of cartilage left in that stupid joint.

The ankle has since been fused and I am relatively pain free. It's a fucking blessing beyond description to be able to walk across a room. I could make a joke here about my vanity (I'm overloaded with it) and how tragic it is to never be able to wear gorgeous high heels. But somehow, it just ain't funny.


What about the Boy? What about him indeed. We remained friends but whatever spark occurred that night by the paddle boats probably fizzled out the minute he met my scary over protective dad at the ER. We lost touch but I would hear about him thru the Crazy Mama's grapevine. He remained talented, amazing and fascinating, moved to Minneapolis where he was in a band of some renowned (ethereal, synthesizer stuff), and got married.


Sadly and eerily about a year or so ago I stumbled across this review of his bands last release, dated October 18th 2004 that said that he had died of brain cancer earlier that year.

The accidental reading of the review and the coincidence of my being asked to write this post on Oct. 18th is just plain spooky.

At the top the page is the only picture I could find with Google Images of the park and bridge, with a circle around the spot where the incident occurred. It looks so different now.

I have titled this post with a song lyric just like Churlita always does so appropriately.