Sticks and Stones and Broken Bones

When I was little all I wanted in life was to break a bone. Any bone would suffice, but preferably an ankle, foot, or leg. Casts were awesome and crutches were even more awesome. Having an injury like that meant two things: 1) you were a bad ass and, 2) you were guaranteed instant celebrity status as kids who weren't even your friends would stand in line just to sign your cast (including the girl who made fun of you for winning the spelling bee 3 years in a row). Being injured also secured you a solid 4-6 week long pass from gym class which, as an asthmatic kid, was my version of winning the lottery.

To this day I'm shocked that I made it to the age of 14 without seriously injuring myself. It may have something to do with the fact that my interests involved playing the piano, reading, playing with Breyer Horses, and making friendship bracelets. That's not to say that I never hurt myself along the way. I'm horribly uncoordinated and I was forever tripping over things, or simply making poor life decisions. Like the time I tried to do a flying dismount off of my Schwinn bike and ended up sliding down the road on my face/two front teeth. What ensued was an epic fail on my part- an emergency dentist appointment. Emergency room? AWESOME! Emergency dentist appointment? LAME! Cast and/or crutches? AWESOME! Two front black teeth? The opposite of anything remotely awesome.

By the time I finally broke a "real bone" worthy of a trip to the emergency room, I was apparently cosmically overdue for an accident and my greatest desire was realized with a full arm and leg cast on opposite sides of my body. When I was 14 I started riding the most retarded horse of all time, a race track reject by the name of Plum. Plum had a lot of fun teaching me the art of the emergency dismounts as he would casually eject me from the saddle anytime he felt like it (which was pretty much anytime I rode him). One day Plum decided that he was no longer interested in participating in team sports and he bucked me off, leaving me for dead. I remember seeing the ground coming at me fast, along with an alarming cluster of quarry rocks.

When I opened my eyes, my mom was standing over me and I kept saying, "Knee, elbow. Knee, elbow. Knee, elbow," despite the fact that I wasn't even registering any pain. My mom asked me if I wanted her to stay with me or if I wanted her to try and catch Plum. I said, "Stay with me," and she promptly left to go find the horse. When my mom returned she announced that I had 1 of 2 options: I could get back on the horse or I could go to the emergency room. I'm not sure why, but all of a sudden, I had no desire to go to the emergency room. My mom, who isn't very motherly, finally got tired of trying to argue with my 14-year old concussive self and took matters into her own hands: she tried to force me to get back on the horse. We ended up in the emergency room.

I'll fast forward through the details- but I broke my elbow and it required surgery the next day. SCORE! I was a bad ass! (Take that, friendship bracelet making induced carpal tunnel syndrome!) When my mom asked the Doctor to also take a look at my knee, I brushed it off and assured them I was fine, despite the trail of blood that was running down my leg. The next day I woke up and realized that perhaps I was wrong, as my knee had apparently swallowed my leg. When the doctor finally saw it, she recoiled in horror and said something to the effect of, "Yeah that probably needed stitches." They removed 100 cc's of fluid from my knee during surgery and sent me off for an MRI.

At this point it had been about 24 hours since I had eaten anything and the male nurse must have taken pity on me. He gave me some of his McDonald's french fries, although his attentiveness may be attributed to the fact that he was responsible for injecting daily antibiotic shots into my butt. Anyway, anesthesia and french fries do not mix well. If you've never had the pleasure of vomiting on yourself while encapsulated in an MRI tube, you should be so lucky. It turned out that in addition to my concussion, broken elbow, and possible tetanus, I had also dislocated my opposite knee.

About two days into my recovery, my mom was apparently fed up with taking care of my basic needs and she announced that she was done babying me. I think the final straw was when I asked her to re-tie one of my shoes because she had tied it too tight and it was cutting off my circulation. With no one willing to help me and since I only had one functioning extremity per side, showering became a complicated web of duct tape and trash bags in order to keep the casts dry. Shaving was dangerous and getting out of the shower became an extreme game of slip-and-fall Russian roulette. I couldn't brush my hair or teeth, fasten my bra, put on socks, or tie my shoes. The end result wasn't so much a clean or even fully dressed version of me. I went to school every day for 3 months looking like a homeless person, which probably explains a lot about my social ineptitude and why I never had a date to a school dance.

The best part of all of this was that our house was one mile from my bus stop and my mom insisted that I make the trek/hobble every day to and from the bus stop. One day, as I descended the bus stairs one leg at a time, my toe caught on the stair and I tripped and fell down the stairs and landed in the middle of the highway. My leg was at a weird angle and I realized that I had actually bent the metal rod in my leg brace. As I lay there like a turtle weighed down by my casts and an oversized LL Bean backpack, waiting for Larry the bus driver to pick me up, I came to the conclusion that I was anything but a bad ass and that maybe, emergency dentist appointments weren't half bad.

Abandoned

2010 has been a pretty craptastic year for me. I'm glad that we're into June because that means I am halfway finished with this year. I'm also thinking that since everyone in my life has abandoned me, that hopefully this means that things will begin to "look up". But you know how they keep referring to the recession as a "double dip" recession? I'm secretly afraid that my life is one big double dip and that just as things look up, I'll get hit by another metaphorical bus. Or, knowing me, a real bus.

So let me give you a breakdown of all the people who have left me since January 2010: (In order of descending traumatic value).

1. Gerry Berry
2. Boyfriend
3. Best friend that thought he was my boyfriend or wanted to be my boyfriend.
4. Chinatown Bus Friend (Although, technically, I abandoned her)

Gerry Berry was a black lab and my absolute best friend. I honestly think he was my soul mate. Ex boyfriend is pretty sure that I am autistic since I am obsessed with touching and smelling things, even though I hate to be touched, and also because I am only really capable of loving my dog. Gerry was adorable, never barked, had an incredibly heavy head that he disliked having to hold up on his own, refused to play fetch, and loved carrying around shoes. Despite Gerry's horrible breath and recent unfortunate bout with incontinence, he was the best dog a girl could ever have. GB was almost 12 years old when my parents' landlord killed him by refusing to fix the air conditioning in their house. I miss him terribly. I still talk to him, and sometimes I try to smell his collar to see if it still smells like him. It doesn't, but that doesn't stop me from smelling it every once in awhile (read: every night before I go to bed).

About 2 weeks after the loss of Gerry, boyfriend decided that he wanted to be an ex, not a current boyfriend. This wasn't dramatic and it came as no surprise, seeing as how we had constantly talked about breaking up. After 3 years of dating, we were nowhere near getting engaged, and at the advanced age of 28 I have decided it is time to find my soul mate. Oh, wait. I already did and now he's dead. Shit! I wonder if ex boyfriend will take me back?! UPDATE: This paragraph looked disproportionately shorter compared to the other paragraphs and I felt like that was unfair to ex- boyfriend. He is a really great guy and still my very best friend, so it's hard to write mean things about him. Now that I'm single we all know how this is going to end: I'm going to become the crazy cat lady, even though I hate cats.

In the midst of all of this, my best friend had gone MIA. When he finally called me he said that, "It was really awkward the last time we hung out and I don't think we should talk for awhile." The last time I saw ex-best friend we went to lunch and he brought along his new/old/crazy girlfriend. I tried really hard to get her to like me because he had mentioned how jealous she was of me. I even asked about her job, which seemed lame, and I instantly regretted asking her the question. But the point is that I tried. To make a long story short, when ex-best friend dumped me over the phone, I cried/hiccuped/snotted all over the place and said something to the effect of, "Have a nice life," when, in fact, I wanted to say a lot more, but I was having trouble breathing. So I did the only mature and responsible thing I could think of and I de-friended him on facebook and deleted his number from my phone. But I did write down his number in a safe place in case I ever need to call him. Because that's how I work- I can be dramatic, but deep down I know that I will instantly regret my impulsive behavior.

And now I'm writing a blog in hopes that someone will be my friend.

Getting Started

So I have wanted to start a blog for sometime. In fact, I have started a couple of blogs, but generally my interest wanes after the first blog. I'm hoping this one will be slightly more successful than my previous attempts and if I make it past, let's say 5 blogs, then we can consider this a triumphant success. Not just a success, but a triumphant one. I'm pretty sure that's redundant but I'm too lazy to go back and fix it.

So here are a few reasons why I'm just now starting this blog. They will be in the form of a list because I like lists and you should, too:

1. Any time I tell a story somebody always points out that certain things could only happen to me. Such as: being part of a medical experiment; getting mugged and then convincing the guy to give me my license back; or the fact that my family hasn't decorated a Christmas Tree since the Marijuana Christmas Tree incident of 1997. I don't think it was until I got to college that I realized that my crazy family/growing up on a farm/late blooming/lack of social interaction set me apart from most other kids my age. At some point I decided I should write a book about my strange childhood because I might as well make money off of it. Unfortunately, I'm a slacker and I'm pretty sure I have ADD, and I crave instant gratification, so a blog seemed much easier.
   
2. Timing. I'm feeling abandoned and I think I'm using the internet to reach out and make new friends in a less-creepy way than craigslist or the Chinatown bus. (It's true, I made a friend on the Chinatown bus. She was really nice, but after she invited me to volunteer with her on MLK Jr. day, I realized we could never be friends. I mean, she was obviously a way nicer person than me and apparently spent her days off doing things for other people. I felt weird, slightly violated, and betrayed that someone I had such high hopes for becoming my new best friend, was in actuality, a good person.)

Crap, that's only two reasons. I think they're sufficient, right?