I used to think I was invincible.
No, really, wait a minute. I honestly did. Right up until I broke my toe on Sunday afternoon, by stubbing it against the bed, of all things.
Why did I think I'm invincible? Well, mostly because I've been knocked down three times, been pushed down stairs, fallen downstairs, been impaled on an iron gate, and had various other injuries and I've never once been hospitalised or even broken a bone.
Until Sunday, that is. When I broke my toe by stubbing it against the damn bed. How embarassing.
I've had a serious run of good luck, when it comes to injuries. Growing up with three brothers and a dodgy (at best) sense of balance, I'm really a walking recipe for disaster.
I can remember most of my injuries. They started quite young...
(The Pre-teenage years)
- Fell off my roller-skates onto a gravel footpath and scraped the shit out of the right side of my face. The kids at school called me Freddie Kruger for a week. Bastards.
- Chipped the front of my tooth whilst walking home from karate practice. I've still got the chip there now. Luckily, it didn't expose the nerve. Put me off karate for years.
- Got punched square in the nose by one of my brothers. Ran all over the supermarket looking for my mum, dripping blood everywhere, whilst some poor shelf-stacker ran after me with a box of tissues, trying to clean me up.
- Got clipped by a car when crossing the road. Walked away with just bruises and two very scared parents.
- Got knocked off my bike on my way to piano lessons. Cut my hands and bruised my elbows and knees, but otherwise ok.
(The Teenage years)
- Got pushed down the stairs by one of my brothers (it was like a scene from The Omen. He stood at the top of the stairs, watching me drag my heavy schoolbag up, waiting for me to reach the top. On the second last step from the top, he simply looked at me, then thrust his hand out, hitting me in the chest, and I fell, backwards, down the entire stairs, almost through the glass window at the bottom. Freak!).
- Got knocked off my bike at around 50mph, whilst tearing down a very long, very steep hill near my house. My next door neighbour was on his bike at the bottom of the hill, and pulled out right in front of me. We skidded across a four-road intersection, me on the bottom with him and two bikes on top of me. I pretty much (temporarily) destroyed the left-hand side of my face and body - the skin was kinda ripped off in place. Major bruising. Black eye, which swelled shut. I have no memory of the actual accident, or the two hours afterwards. I had to take a week off school, and couldn't leave the house because I looked like I'd had the shit beat out of me. My neighbour cut his elbow. Poor guy.
- Got hit in the eye with a sweeping brush. This was at school, not long after the bike accident above. One of the girls in my class was messing around, swinging a sweeping brush in the air. She caught my, right below my left eye. Yes, the same eye that had been swollen shut in the above accident. It immediately blackened, shut again, and she also burst a blood vessel which meant that for the following month, I had a red streak going from my iris to the corner of my eye. Very creepy.
(The College Years)
- I got impaled on an iron spike as I climbed over a gate in the university grounds. Well, when I say I got impaled, I didn't actually. What happened was that Mozz and I were climbing over the gate, on the way back from the pub. I had my favourite jumper (orange with a horizontal yellow stripe across the middle - loved it!) tied around my waist, and as I climbed over the gate, and made to drop down the other side, I couldn't help but notice that my feet were still dangling about four feet from the ground. I wriggled around, but still nothing. I was hanging there. I managed to untie my jumper and fell down, and then realised that the spike had perfectly impaled my jumper, creating a hole about half a foot in diameter right through the middle, on both sides. My jumper was destroyed. I got nothing more than a twisted ankle.
- During rag week (not sure if you have this in the States or Canada, but Google it if not), myself and my boyf were on our way to the Rag Ball, which was a big fancy dress dealie. We were dressed as some sort of devil-type-thingies. Think long flowing black capes, white face paint, fake blood, etc. Along the way, I tripped and fell and bashed my head again a low wall up the road from where we lived. My lip split open and started gushing blood. I, being quite drunk, kind of went into shock and started crying. What's worse is that I wanted to go home, but everyone else said "No way! That looks so cool! It fits in with the costume!" Bastards. Anyway, I went home, looked in the mirror and nearly fainted. My face and neck were streaked with blood, and my dress was soaked in the stuff. I looked like I had just gorged myself on a sacrifical virgin or something. I've still got a scar on my lip now.
(My more recent idiocy)
- Quite possibly the scariest of the injuries that I remember was when I was on hols on the Canary Islands with Mozz. I was walking down the ceramic-tiled stairs when my dusty flip-flop lost it's grip and I fell... all the way down the ceramic stairs. (I'd like to point out that I was stone-cold sober at the time). What's frightening was that I landed in a heap at the bottom and I couldn't move. I'd hand the wind knocked out of me, but even when my breath came back, I couldn't move. For a couple of minutes, I contemplated life as a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down. Eventually, I got movement back, but I had seriously hurt my lower back, judging from the fact that my ass almost immediately went black with bruising. I was sore for a while after, but eventually recovered fully. Still pulled too ;) Heheheh.
So, that's a lot of little knocks and bruises, but I never once broke a bone. So, like I said, I thought I was invincible. Or that maybe I had some sort of a guardian angel. Not that I believe in angels. But something was looking out for me, right?
Until he decided to go on his fag break around 3pm on Sunday afternoon, and I stubbed my toe and broke it.
It's downhill from here. I'm going home to wrap myself in bubble-wrap, just in case.
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