We lose things certain
in pursuing things uncertain.
In Hammondsport, there used to be a large tree outside of
the school. It was across the giant field
used for games of football, soccer, or what have you. It was past a small corner where the chain
link fence keeping students out of the river had a gap between it, and the
wooden plank fence that did absolutely nothing.
It may have served as a bench during a teacher’s strike, once. I remember that being the most ridiculous strike,
as, at the time, most of the teachers owned either a BMW or a Lexus. Or both.
The gap was trodden to the earth – no grass dared grow the
fifteen feet that more than fifty students traversed each way daily. It fed onto the sidewalk, where it hitched
and bent askew onto a massive steel bridge.
The bridge had been a deep, cerulean blue at one point, but was now
barely more than a powder blue bordering on stark white, with graffiti, rust,
and scrapes making up its more visible portions. To its right, a muddy footpath to a small
landing just beyond school grounds that ran a river.
Hammondsport had many rivers. Being in a valley, and at the base of a
freshwater lake, there were inlets all over the place. There were, however, only two that directly
cut the town into portions – this little slip, and another that had been
engineered to flow from a larger waterfall, along a mill, through a flume, and
out to the lake. The mill had been
closed and rotting since my mother was a child in this town.
This bridge was here when she was a kid. Much like when she was a kid, too, this was
where I would encourage my nicotine habits in my earlier teenage years –
before, during, and after school. Let me
preface by saying it was not one of my smarter decisions (neither was stapling
my hands together, but that’s another story that had a shorter heal time), and
its habitual use was extinguished by the time I was nineteen.
The tree was on this muddied path between the fence and the
bridge, and the sidewalk had not always had that hitch in it. When my uncle went to this school back in the
god-knows-when era, he’d used that tree to save his life. Figuratively, and literally.
As he left the school, a heavy rain had fallen upon the
valley. So, this was any day from May to
August. The practical sort would have
grabbed a newspaper, or modified a jacket or sweater vest into a rudimentary
umbrella. Not my uncle: He just walks in
it like a damn honey badger. He got to
the far side of the field before the rain begins falling so hard he can see
barely a foot in front of him.
So, now it’s likely any day in June.
Anyway, he pulls up under a tree to wait for the rain to let
up. Thanks to the roaring rain on a new,
blue steel bridge, he doesn’t hear the thunder as he rests his weight against the
trunk. He didn’t see the lightning in
the traditional sense. It hit the top of
the tree, and followed the path of least resistance out into the back of his
head, down his neck and arms, through his abdomen, and out his belt buckle –
which is when he saw it.
A half hour later, he and my grandparents were at the local
hospital. I love this hospital – when I’d
had blunt force trauma to the skull and couldn’t move my head without vomiting,
they encouraged me that it was a cold, and I should go home and sleep it
off. For the record: the second hospital
advised against that. Strongly.
So, they’re at the hospital with my electrocuted uncle. As it was described to me, every artery,
vessel, and capillary that could be seen was working its damnedest to be seen as they all pushed out along
the surface of his skin. The bruising
from this would take over a month to heal.
The actual shock had, otherwise, not harmed him – save the scar on his
pelvis where the lightning seared his flesh on its way through his belt
buckle. He made a bid with God that if
he saved his life, he’d go into Seminary.
And that’s why he runs a church in Geneva, NY. There’s a lovely band out there called Gym
Class Heroes – you may have heard of it.
Hearing of its startup, my uncle tried to ban Matt McGinley from the
church. A reasonable assessment for a
man of the cloth.
That effing tree would be hallmark in my youth as well, it
would seem. It may have been split in
half, and cracked the sidewalks on its way down, but it was still standing in
1992. That year, I got in a fight with the
school bully of the third graders, Chuck.
Well, more him harassing me and my running away as he threw rocks at my
head. I grabbed a fallen limb from a
tree and tried to hit them away, hitting him along with it. He chased me past the tree, and over the
bridge, where I finally dropped the stick to run better. He began screaming my name, trying to get my
attention, and when I turned, his backpack met with my skull. The force was so powerful it sent my flying
clean over the top of a three foot fence.
It was a lovely white one, with little yellow flowers between each
plank. I couldn’t figure out what had
happened or where I was, and as I lay there, the little shit ran. Left me there.
As I’ve mentioned, the First Rachel ran for help. I tried to get up and yarked everywhere. I remember the feeling – it was if I was
standing sideways, even when standing straight up. I couldn’t see out of my right eye, and fell
just as quickly as I stood, puking everywhere again. A car pulled up – silver Mercedes; our French
teacher (maybe that’s why I liked French so much). He offered me a ride home, but I didn’t get
in cars with strangers. Puked
again. Can he call someone? – No our
home phone was disconnected again.
Puked. Can he take me home? – No,
but you can get my mother. Puke. He has
no clue where she is.
At this point, I just didn’t care. If I didn’t do something, I was increasingly
aware something even worse was going to happen.
I managed to direct him to the town pharmacy, with our apartment over
it. Helping me up the stairs, I went in,
may have said something to my mother, puked, and then went into the bedroom,
leaving her with my teacher.
I use the word ‘bedroom’ very loosely. This was an economy; a ‘studio’ apartment. Half of the giant room was the kitchen,
table, and bathroom. The other half, separated
by giant sliding wooden doors, contained one brass bedframe with box spring and
mattress, and two other twin mattresses on the floor – my mother, sister, and
I, respectively. In the corner was a
little twelve inch TV that I would frequently use to watch Doug, The Simpsons,
Rocko’s Modern Life, or Ren & Stimpy.
This was the apartment I learned to cook in, as my mother had returned
to full time employment. My sister being
old enough to legally supervise me in her absence also had to learn. We ate a lot of eggs the first few weeks.
I’d barely had my shoes off and head down when she pulled me
to a seated position. Her fingers ran
down my spine as she tried to get me to focus on her. She pushed shoes onto my feet, held the container
while I puked again, and walked me out to her car. I held this plastic bathroom trash can like a
four year old holds a bucket at the beach.
And I filled it just as often.
We arrived at Ira Davenport Hospital. After waiting a half hour, puking several
times, the geniuses gave my mother the aforementioned conclusion. This was where I first learned the
grammatically correct usage of ‘Dickhead’, ‘Fuckface’, ‘Asshole’, and other
variants. We went to another hospital
after that; I don’t remember where. I
lost consciousness somewhere in there, but I do think I remember an ambulance
ride. There were sirens, and some guy
tapping my left cheek telling me to stay awake.
I didn’t want to – every time I saw the look on my mother’s face, I was
too afraid to stay awake.
The rest is a bit of a blur for a bit. There were pain killers involved, and I was
in Elmira. I was high on some pain
killer, freaked out and amazed by Eureka’s Castle on Nickelodeon. I mean, like Half-Baked quality freak
out. I remember turning to my mother and
exclaiming how the dragon could talk.
She looked back at me, reading glasses on, slight smile to the corner of
her mouth, and simply said, “I know, hon’ – I can see it, too.”
I didn’t go back to school right away. I don’t actually think I went back for at
least another month or two. Just prior
might have been the expanse of time where I discovered the library and decided
I should read Homer’s “Iliad”. After a
week I went back for Chronicles of Narnia.
I only think that specifically, as I was reading “The Lion, The Witch,
and The Wardrobe” the first day I remember what my face looked like. There was a lot of bruising and
swelling. With the bone around my right
eye’s orbit crushed, it was akin to cro-magnon meets Yukon potato. The eye was barely opened, both as the
musculature wasn’t in the right places anymore, and as the swelling was too
great. What was visible, was an eye with
a blown blood vessel that wouldn’t move left, right, up, or down. The inward crush of the skull had caused
several fragments of bone to either pin the muscles, or sever them completely.
I thought it was the coolest thing. I spent days going around the apartment
acting like a zombie with a mutilated face (thank you Rocko for that inspiration). I also kept asking why my brains didn’t
squirt out the other side when I was hit with the backpack (thank you again
Rocko).
Time hiccups again, and I remember looking at a calendar anticipating
a mid-February operation. The operation
is explained in great detail; I remember none of it. As they get me in my bare-ass outfit, my
mother asks me if I know what’s going on.
I apparently didn’t, because she broke it all down for me. They were taking out the fragments of bone
trapped in the muscles. Then, they were
going to cut down the remaining fractures.
An implant was inserted to keep the eye from going back inside my skull,
and to maintain the shape of the socket.
After that, they were going to rearrange some muscles to make it all
work. Also, they would be severing a
major nerve as they work, so that should help with pain relief later.
Again, I was excited: this could be fun! I don’t remember coming out of it. I remember the cafeteria style meals delivered
to the room. My amazement at the
salsbury steak – although I would forever wonder what, exactly a Salz Berry
was, and what did it look like if it could be served as steak? I remember the bruise that covered half of my
face- my face! – It looked normal again.
Well, swollen, but normal. The
bruise would turn from purple, to brown, to green, to yellow, and eventually
fade within a month. I had bought crazy
ABBA sunglasses to wear when we were in public, because I didn’t want anyone to
stare.
The sliced nerve was the biggest bitch. I remember that summer because, at our babysitter’s,
she’d leave CNN on. Nothing says
entertainment to a nine year old like CNN in an election year that has Ross
Perot running for presidency. I would
sit there, watching this tripe, feeling an itch on my nose. But it could not be scratched: I could feel
the itch, but with the cut nerve, I couldn’t feel me scratching it. Later in life, I would learn that ‘itch’ was
the nerve healing.
There are a few takeaways here, kids. First, lightning can strike twice – it just
may not be in the way you expected. If
there’s anything certain in life, it’s that nothing is certain. This ties us into point two: We lose things
that are certain when pursuing the uncertain.
We – whether it’s ‘we’ as a culture, ‘we’ as people, or even ‘we’ as a
nation, indivisible – have this notion that everything we are doing now will
certainly be the same a week from now, a month from now, or twelve years from
now. I can certainly tell you in the
experiences I’ve had – from this accident, to leg injuries; meeting my wife in
a moment of serendipity; the ones we lose along the path – that we are pursuing
the uncertain, because it is the most certain course we as living creatures are
set upon. With that, to plan anything
with certainty would be to plan not with failure, but without a vision for
living.
And, despite the tumultuous risks of doing so, I am a man
for living.
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