Tumbleweed
It took a while before I realized what had happened. The only thing that did register was that whatever just occurred, pandemonium ensued at 1 a.m. early Friday morning. OH MY GOD, ARE YOU OKAY!?!?!? STAY THERE, I'LL CALL THE RESCUE! All I wanted to do was scream. But I just lay there, motionless for what seemed like an eternity, because I knew that before I did anything else, I'd have to do the mental inventory of the physical damage first.
I was sleep deprived and quite anxious to get myself into a deep slumber, the kind where if rockets and grenades were thrown under the covers, I'd still remain asleep. I'd taken my shoes off, ran up the stairs to get something and planned to come back down and jump under the blanket. I didn't take into account the socks I'd left on my feet, OR the carpeted stairs. The next thing I knew, my head had bounced off a stair along with the rest of my body. The image wasn't pretty. Once I realized what I had done, my eyes opened and focused on my sprawled out body. My head hurt, and my eyes shifted to my left leg, twisted abnormally with my left foot deeply rooted in a glass picture frame that had been placed at the bottom of the stairs to be hung on the wall. Shards of glass stuck out from all sides of my socked foot. I decided I'd think about that in a few minutes, after I'd completed the inventory. And so I began ... but first, what is that NOISE? Right. My mother and sister, calling to me from the top of the stairs, asking if I'm okay and carrying on while I just need QUIET. I think I was polite and said, "please just give me a minute." They fell silent and waited while I let everything sink in.
To begin, my head hurts (still does, actually.) Okay, so I must have hit a stair or two on the way down. Next, my left arm suddenly has a heartbeat. Okay, so that hurts too. I already know the status of the left leg, so we'll just return to that later. Right leg, hmm, seems to be unaffected by any sort of trauma. Good. Oh, and there's pain in your upper and lower back ... check. Then my INS (internal navigation system) alarm went off. What the HELL is that pain signal I'm getting? Oh, it's a pain in my ass. [this is funny, but actually it isn't, in reality.] How I pulled this maneuver off is beyond me, but the right side of my, er, butt is SCREAMING in pain. [try and control your laughter, okay? I said this was serious.]
ANYWAY ...
Nevermind all the OTHER things that were going on in my life that were, shall we say, unpleasant? I had this new issue to deal with, so it was time to go back to the left foot-lodged-in-glass dilemma. I can only imagine what this looked like from the top of the stairs looking down, as I lay there motionless but my brain going through the checklist at a rapid pace. Then I heard it again, "ARE YOU OKAY????" and I begged my mother and sister to give me a minute more. I'd let them know as soon as inventory was complete. Right, the left foot in glass. Hmm... a funny thought: if this was a dart game I'd have a bull's eye, because my foot was exactly in the middle of the picture frame. And hey, look at that, all those glass shards poking out of my socked foot ... so where's the pain? Inventory check: none. Where's the warm, red liquid? Inventory check: none.
It's at this point when I realize my mother is standing on the stairs right behind where I lay, anxious to get her hands into the glass shards surrounding my foot. Though she's still asking me if I'm okay, I still haven't responded. I decide it's time to get up off the stair that's lodged into my back and try to shake this off. First, back to the left foot. I decide there's little choice but to move it, so I do. My left leg was headed left, while its foot was far right into the glass. Move leg first, then foot, I reasoned. Align the left knee to the direction of the left foot that's pointing right. Okay. No pain in the leg. I decide to pull my foot out of the glass, watching as the shards fell into the carpet. Odd. No warm red stuff. I'm not complaining, this was purely observation on my part. And hey, let's pick the head up while we're at it. Ouch. No, let's change that to #@%*& SHIT, that hurts! Regardless, I was determined to get myself up off the stairs, no matter what.
The first thing I did when I righted myself was to remove the villain: my socks. A quick check of the left foot revealed NOT ONE SCRATCH - an amazing feat that only I could have pulled off. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, watch me as I plunge down a flight of stairs on my arse and plow my left foot into a glass frame, scoring a bull's eye AND draw no warm red stuff. YES! I've done it! Watch me take a tumble down the stairs with the grace of a water buffalo and hydroplane into the ether ... ;-)
Mental inventory of the physical damage was done. I was up, I was talking and I was walking. WHERE THE HELL ARE MY PJ's??? I could care less what I just did, I wanted to sleep and my ass hurt. Nevermind that I could have a concussion, (watching that Cubs baseball player do that on the field the other day made me re-live my own head-cracking collision with the stair,) I was going to sleep, me and my hurtin' ass. Mom was afraid I wasn't telling her the truth, that based on the sound of my descent as well as the time it took me to get myself up, that perhaps there was more to it than I was fessing up. No, no, I'm fine, go to sleep, I begged. PUHLEEEEEEEEZE, I just want to sleep. It took all of maybe two minutes, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up 5 hours later.
Time to do the next day after the 'incident' mental inventory. Head hurts, check. Ass hurts, check. Anything else? Nope. Good. I could go about my business and not give it another thought.
Yeah, right.
Until the next day, when I woke up with that city bus on top of me. Hey! What happened to all-is-okay yesterday? Did I dream that? Where'd this bus come from? Someone told me that this is exactly what happens to people who walk away from car accidents: they say they're fine, but then the bus appears out of nowhere. Days later it sinks in ... the evil doers (couldn't resist using that) that live inside each of us who wake only when you experience a bodyquake and wreak havoc for days after. Every inch of you hurts, and in case you try to ignore that, all areas sport some ugly, bad-ass bruising, your wake-up call that yes, this really did happen. You really did hydroplane down those stairs at a speed previously unregistered. And yes, you really did plunge your foot into that glass picture frame and yes, without a scratch.
My head hurts. My back hurts. I've got visible bruises. I'll live.