Oh, hello!

I haven’t been entirely absent, just in hiding. You are perfectly welcome to fashion your own tin foil chapeau and join me here under my coffee table for a spell, but I’ll completely understand if that doesn’t sound appealing. What if I get a giant tub of Utz Cheeseballs and we can practice throwing them in each other’s mouths all day? Sounds like a gas, doesn’t it?! I’ll saddle up for Foodtown right now! Oh wait, that would require me leaving the house—yeah, that’s not going to work. Come to think of it, I probably shouldn’t even be typing this right now, THEY ARE WATCHING ME! THEY ARE TOTALLY GUNNING FOR ME, THEY ARE EVERYWHERE…*hyperventilates into a Fresh Step bag.*

Sorry about that. Of course I haven’t been shored up all this time, and I couldn’t even tell you who “they” are, but probably not aliens or the IRS. It’s just that I’m not entirely convinced that some unknown force isn’t trying to kill me before I run in my half marathon this Saturday. You might say that since getting my cast off a couple of weeks ago I’ve been a smidge paranoid and about 500 % more cognizant of the Dangers of Everyday Life. Why, just since this Sunday I have almost seriously injured myself like six times from near wipeouts and banging various knee caps against hard inanimate objects. Was I this klutzy pre-accident? Or is something or someone out to finish the job?

Pertinently, you know what the scariest fucking movie on the planet is? No, goober, not Saw or Friday the 13th or It or even The Exorcist. Final Destination. Ever see it? Final Destination doesn’t fit in the typical blood and gore/sadistic killer genre, though there is some of that and a lot of BAM! MADE YOU JUMP! moments that I think I’ve mentioned I can’t stand. The premise is that Death is a persnickety bitch who comes for all of us at a certain time, but only in horrifying fashion, like an unnecessarily graphic plane crash (do NOT watch this movie a few days before a trip. Just don’t.) ,and there is usually jack all you can do about it. If you happen to be one of the lucky few to cheat Death, Death gets her panties all in a wad and will basically keep trying to kill you in cinematically interesting ways until she succeeds, even if it means two or three equally terrible sequels. I don’t know what crawled up Death’s butt and died (how meta!) but my guess is that she’s really just some obese Cathy look-a-like from Duluth with an inferiority complex, mournfully eating Yoplait in front of a box of doughnuts. Why else would she be so cranky?

Anyway, I can’t be sure if it’s Death after me, but I do know that if there was one major cementer of this sense of foreboding post accident , it was the collective ZOMG, YOU WERE SO LUCKY! YOU COULD HAVE DIED sentiment from almost everyone when I told them how I fractured my wrist. There is no way to downplay a hit-and-run. If you broke something due to your own klutzy volition, hey, that sucks, but many of us have been there. If it was sports related, it’s implicitly understood that you were asking for it. If you got hit by a car, however, YOU COULD HAVE DIED! And don’t you forget it.

And yes, I was lucky that the Curious Incident of the Chevy/Mazda/Shit Machine in the Night didn’t result in a more serious injury or death. I now think about that every time I hear about a worse accident, and after awhile with the cast on, it became knee-jerk to beat inquirers to the punch when they found out how I was injured: “yeah, it’s only my wrist and I have a bruise where the car hit me. I WAS REALLY LUCKY.”

This is a total tangent, but Oh My God, when it comes to broken bones, WHAT is with all of the unsolicited war stories from strangers? I’m assuming that only if you’re in the hospital hooked up to some sort of traction apparatus or in a wheelchair will people spare you and maintain a reverential, pitying silence, as few will be able to top that nor feel like a callous asshole for trying. To a lesser extent, a cast on your leg will obviously provoke questions, but at least that kind of bone break automatically wins you a few feet of maneuvering space, since everyone is convinced they are somehow going to further mangle you by stepping on your foot. There are usually crutches or a cane handy for “accidental” stabbins’, too, so I think people are just naturally weary of gimps.

Arm casts, on the other hand? Open season. Since mine didn’t even reach my elbow and I never had a sling, much of the time I was able to just go about my business, tucking the wounded arm bird-like into myself. Most people were unaware of the cast until I was right next to them—at which point they would light up. But not to fawn, (unless I count all of my rad friends who Sharpied it, which was the only fun part of having the putrid thing) Oh no. Maybe to dump an ashtray on it (that’s okay, Evan, I forgive you!) but never to fawn. Couch that sense of entitlement, special flower, because it turns out everyone and their Alan Alda has broken an arm or some fingers or a wrist, and as the newly afflicted, it is your job to realize just how benign your namby-pamby radial fracture is.

The comments, in order of popularity:

--I’ll bet it itches, huh?

--Oh no, what happened?

-I’ll bet it stinks, huh?

-Trash bags in the shower! Hahaha, sucks, right?

-Oh, that’s not that bad. Mine was all the way up to here (finger at bicep/shoulder/neck (liar). )

--Four weeks? Try three months!

--So you won’t need physical therapy? That’s lucky. I had to get pins here and here. The doctor said he had never seen a break that bad!

--That’s why I ALWAYS look both ways before crossing! (damn, did this one frost my cookies. Yes, lady—it was totally MY fault, because I am five and haven’t yet found a Bob the Builder sticker quite fetching enough to make mastering this life lesson worthwhile)

--It will never be the same again. Trust me. Never again.

Of course I know I’m not an exquisite butterfly for breaking a bone, nor did I ever want to be handled like one because of the cast. On the contrary, I wish people would have politely ignored it, like a limp or a lazy eye, but instead most pointed at it expectantly. I’d want to be all, “what? Oh, this old thing?” but I quickly realized I was obligated to provide an explanation as to just what in the hell I did to myself with a side of I WAS REALLY LUCKY!

The point in all of this—I think there’s one :o)—is that I KNOW I was lucky. But I don’t feel lucky at all, guys. I feel like a marked woman.

I suspect (well I’m hoping) 95 % of my fear will dissipate after I’ve run this half-marathon on Saturday and I’ve proven to myself that I can actually run 13 miles without stopping and am no longer the whiny 15-year-old who faked a knee injury to get out of cross-country meets. It won’t mean I’m invincible, but I frankly can’t think of a more self-empowering action at this point in my life. I have come so far, have been through so much in the past few months and am so damn close now, that the thought of anything fucking up this thing for me gives me heart palpitations. I just desperately want it to be Saturday morning so I can run my race, have my I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR! moment and later relax at my friend’s bachelorette party with a cocktail or twelve.

Until Saturday…can I interest you in a Taquito? I don’t think this one has been under the couch for too long.