The Moral of the Story: Everyone Needs to Pay More Attention to Me
Several weeks ago, Drew and I went camping in Big Sur with our friends Chris and John. After two days in the "wilderness" of the Ventana campgrounds, I had two scraped knees, various strained muscles and two fractured ribs.
It's really Drew's fault (no seriously, honey, it's your fault so please don't argue with me about it). It's true that I was a wee bit intoxicated when most of the damage was done, but still -- you're totally going to agree with me that it was his fault in just two seconds.
We got a little drunk. And then we went to visit some of Chris's friends at a nearby campsite and we got a little stoned. As we were walking back, Drew realized he had forgotten the marshmallow-roasting sticks he had so painstakingly whittled, so I went back to retrieve them. Then, when I got back to the path those motherfuckers were a good quarter mile up the road. THEY HADN'T EVEN WAITED FOR ME! (Drew, seriously, stop arguing with this version of events. It was definitely a quarter of a mile. And the fact that we'd already started walking up the road when I turned back is no excuse for the fact that you all just kept moving. So shut it and just agree with me.).
So I catch up with them and say some passive-aggressive drunken thing like "Thanks for waiting for me, assholes!" Which they pretty much ignored. But I got my chance to stick it to them good when the three of them stopped to use the restroom. I, being pissed off and drunk, decided to stomp back to the campsite alone. In my deluded mind, they were going to come back to the tents hollering my name and I'd emerge and they'd all grow teary with relief and tell me how important I was to them and how they were wrong to keep walking without me. Or something like that.
So off I go -- stomp! stomp! stomp! No flashlight. Very little moonlight. I thought I could see the road, but suddenly it just wasn't there anymore. The road was gone and I was impaled on top of a wooden snow fence. Everything went black, the fence snapped undernearth my weight and then I was hanging upside down on the opposite side of the fence. Too drunk and scared to holler... scared shitless about the possibility that this fence might be on the border of some steep bluff. What the holy fuck. I had no choice but to flip myself over and fall. Luckily I landed three or four feet below -- and actually stuck the landing, which restored a tad bit of my crushed ego. Then I somehow managed to pull myself back up over the fence and promptly fell flat on my face on the other side.
I was in a state of shock when I found Drew, Chris and John on the path. I didn't tell Drew what had happened until ten minutes later; it took me that long to process it, I think. One second I'd been walking along, plotting some petty revenge on my friends for not paying enough attention to me; a heartbeat later I was hanging upside down on a fence contemplating the possibility that I was about to be seriously injured.
I had a few scrapes, which Drew lovingly bandaged up (even though he was just as drunk as me). That night, and over the course of that next week, I thought I'd just bruised my ribs (you know, the ribs that supported my body weight on top of that fence). They didn't hurt too terribly, but it was uncomfortable to bend over or to sleep on my stomach for several days.
Unfortunately, it's been a few weeks since then and my ribs still hurt like a motherfucker. They're slowly (very, very slowly) getting better, but I haven't been able to go to the gym or run or do any other kind of cardio since we got back from that trip.
It could have been worse, I guess, because the next day I went to find the fence I'd fallen through. It was surrounding some kind of generator and sported a big "DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE" sign.
It's really Drew's fault (no seriously, honey, it's your fault so please don't argue with me about it). It's true that I was a wee bit intoxicated when most of the damage was done, but still -- you're totally going to agree with me that it was his fault in just two seconds.
We got a little drunk. And then we went to visit some of Chris's friends at a nearby campsite and we got a little stoned. As we were walking back, Drew realized he had forgotten the marshmallow-roasting sticks he had so painstakingly whittled, so I went back to retrieve them. Then, when I got back to the path those motherfuckers were a good quarter mile up the road. THEY HADN'T EVEN WAITED FOR ME! (Drew, seriously, stop arguing with this version of events. It was definitely a quarter of a mile. And the fact that we'd already started walking up the road when I turned back is no excuse for the fact that you all just kept moving. So shut it and just agree with me.).
So I catch up with them and say some passive-aggressive drunken thing like "Thanks for waiting for me, assholes!" Which they pretty much ignored. But I got my chance to stick it to them good when the three of them stopped to use the restroom. I, being pissed off and drunk, decided to stomp back to the campsite alone. In my deluded mind, they were going to come back to the tents hollering my name and I'd emerge and they'd all grow teary with relief and tell me how important I was to them and how they were wrong to keep walking without me. Or something like that.
So off I go -- stomp! stomp! stomp! No flashlight. Very little moonlight. I thought I could see the road, but suddenly it just wasn't there anymore. The road was gone and I was impaled on top of a wooden snow fence. Everything went black, the fence snapped undernearth my weight and then I was hanging upside down on the opposite side of the fence. Too drunk and scared to holler... scared shitless about the possibility that this fence might be on the border of some steep bluff. What the holy fuck. I had no choice but to flip myself over and fall. Luckily I landed three or four feet below -- and actually stuck the landing, which restored a tad bit of my crushed ego. Then I somehow managed to pull myself back up over the fence and promptly fell flat on my face on the other side.
I was in a state of shock when I found Drew, Chris and John on the path. I didn't tell Drew what had happened until ten minutes later; it took me that long to process it, I think. One second I'd been walking along, plotting some petty revenge on my friends for not paying enough attention to me; a heartbeat later I was hanging upside down on a fence contemplating the possibility that I was about to be seriously injured.
I had a few scrapes, which Drew lovingly bandaged up (even though he was just as drunk as me). That night, and over the course of that next week, I thought I'd just bruised my ribs (you know, the ribs that supported my body weight on top of that fence). They didn't hurt too terribly, but it was uncomfortable to bend over or to sleep on my stomach for several days.
Unfortunately, it's been a few weeks since then and my ribs still hurt like a motherfucker. They're slowly (very, very slowly) getting better, but I haven't been able to go to the gym or run or do any other kind of cardio since we got back from that trip.
It could have been worse, I guess, because the next day I went to find the fence I'd fallen through. It was surrounding some kind of generator and sported a big "DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE" sign.
1 Comments:
Holy crap. Lucky... and yet unlucky. Hope the ribs heal faster.
That's a funny, funny image though.
Post a Comment
<< Home