Okay, true story… and untrue…
I always get asked what happened that landed me in a wheelchair. It’s the same every time.
Them: Were you in a car accident?
Me: No, a bike accident.
Them: A motorcycle or a bike bike? (yes, everyone says bike twice to clarify)
Me: Just a bike bike.
Them: Were you hit by a car?
Everyone is naive as to how easily one could be paralyzed. It’s amazing more aren’t. Statistically, you have a 1 in 300,000 of having a spinal cord injury, and if you do, there’s a 70% chance you’ll be a quadriplegic like I am - the neck is the most vulnerable part of your spine.
But I digress. I once came up with a fictional account of how I was injured, and I wanted to tell someone that I wouldn’t ever see again. As I mentioned before, I was in a nursing home for a bit and they don’t have x-ray facilities in-house, so when one is needed, they call an x-ray tech with a portable x-ray machine. I had pain in my knee and some swelling, so they called for a tech. He’s the one I laid my tale on.
Me: How did this happen to me? I don’t remember.
Him: What do you mean?
Me: “I don’t know how it happened. One day, I woke up, face down in the woods off the Potomac and I couldn’t move. So I screamed out as much as I could - my lungs were very weak. A couple on a walk found me, and I was rushed to the hospital. When I got there, they did an x-ray and discovered that I had had spinal stabilization surgery with plates done and fresh scars on my neck. My family was called and I learned that I had been missing for four months. The last thing I remember was leaving work on August 6th.”
Now, I made a point of talking with a straight face and little affect. He was riveted. After the x-ray, I heard him faintly talking to the nurses down the hall, so I’m not sure how long my story held up. I hope he still believes it to this very day.
True story: I once got out of jury duty by breaking my neck a week earlier. In retrospect, I could’ve achieved the same result by not registering to vote.
But Bush was running for reelection, so I really wanted to vote. Anyway, no jury duty!
Okay, here’s my John Hughes story
I was a senior high school and my girlfriend at the time and I made it a habit to skip away from school during lunch, go to her place a mile away, fuck like rhesus monkeys and return before the end of the lunch break. There was this total douche assistant principal who used to wonder the parking lots during lunch, looking to catch skippers. If you were even outside of the building during the day, you received detention for skipping.
So one day, she and I are in my car and about to leave and we see him quick stepping it towards us. I just decided to drive off since we were already busted. When we returned, the douche administrator smugly wrote us up.
“I’ll be seeing you both in detention.”
“Whatever.” (I should note that I said that when it was considered a viable comeback)
I didn’t know how I was going to do to get out of it, but by the end of the day, I had devised a story so audacious that no teenage boy would tell it if it wasn’t true.
I walked into the douche tool’s boss’s office ready to let the story fly, confident that it would get us off.
I told this woman of 40 or so that I had a completely reasonable reason why we left.
“She had her period.”
The administrator looked at me sympathetically as I continued on with the made-up details.
“You see, I drive her to school everyday and she came to me crying because it showed through her white pants and…”
At this point, she’s already pulling out the notepad to write us a note to give to the douche bag. I took great pleasure in doing so.
Also, I think my girlfriend swallowed for the first time later that night.
Kidding.
