Motorcycle Champion

 In the 1970's motocross was really popular.  Lots of kids had dirt bikes.  It was part of the culture in my neighborhood, and we had plenty of places to ride.  It was kinda great.  Might seem a bit crazy now, but back then, everybody had them.

Mine was a Suzuki RM50.  I was not quite 11 years old when I got it (might seem a bit crazy now, but back then, everybody had them.)  My brother got his first.  His was an RM80.  He was 15.  Pretty sure I got mine so he'd have somebody to ride with.

We were very responsible.  We had full equipment - helmets, goggles, gloves, chest protectors, kidney belts, boots...  We never took them on the road.  Dad would have killed us.  Not a big deal though because we lived really close to a field that had a bunch of trails.  My brother and I went out late one afternoon for a ride before dinner.

This field had a lot of different trails and you could pick your own line.  I was just starting to get a little more comfortable riding and the big breakthrough for me was finding a hill that I could go down and actually stay on the gas.  Before this I would coast down hills and sometimes ride the brake.  I had made up my own little circuit that suited my abilities.  My brother had his.

They intersected.

I can remember flying through the air.  I remember noticing the sudden silence.  I remember the sound of my brother's voice when he realized what had happened not just to him, but to me; a combo of panic, anguish, and determination as he, with a broken leg, tried to clamber his way over to me.

I was awake but not moving.  I wasn't feeling any pain.  Our sister (aged right between us) had been watching and said she'd turned me over.  She ran to a nearby house to call an ambulance and our mom.  I don't know how long that took, but I was pretty keen to have Mom there ASAP.  When she arrived, I think about the same time as the EMT's, I remember saying, "Mom?"  She answered yes and I said "I love you."

I don't know what compelled me to add such drama to the moment.  The story doesn't have enough of that already?  Like I really need to punch it up? 

Mom's response took a beat or two, and she came back with a clearly choked up, "I love you, too" and they carted me off in the ambulance.

Although still in the dark, I was awake for part of that.  I remember asking them to turn the sigh-reens on.  They obliged.  They asked me about pain and I said I really didn't have any.  Maybe a little in my leg.  I told them I was getting pretty tired and I wanted to sleep.  Pretty much everyone in the ambulance said NO DON'T DO THAT!  I said okay, but quickly afterward said sorry, this is happening, and that was that.

 

I woke up I think about a day later.  In the ICU.  Still in the dark.  Mom was right there.  She could tell the moment I came to.  She explained I had been in an accident, that I was in the hospital, and that I had a lot of surgeries.  I couldn't answer or really communicate at all.  My eyes were bandaged.  My jaw was wired shut, and I had been given a tracheotomy so no air was going to get past my vocal chords anyway.  I have no idea of the specific timeline here but I can remember two things from this time.  I did not like being in the dark and at some point after a few sleep cycles, I managed to get whatever was going on over my left eye undone enough that I could see again.  That was probably a life-saver come to think of it.  It was difficult not knowing what I was, and only made worse by not really knowing where I was.  But communication was still a huge issue.  I remember the staff imploring me to eat something (as much as could be consumed through a wired jaw anyway.)

In a somewhat unbelievable coincidence, earlier that same year a bunch of us kids in the neighborhood, for reasons I couldn't tell you now, all learned how to sign the alphabet.  My sister was brought in as the great translator.  The hospital was willing to get me virtually any food I could think of and someone had suggested a strawberry milkshake and holy crap did THAT sound good.  I held out my left hand (my non-cast hand) and only had to make it as far as the letter S and my sister had it covered.  I'm telling ya - none of us sign language kids would ever have guessed that one day we'd actually need it so badly.  The feeling of pride and accomplishment in that moment, despite the horrendous circumstances, could not be quashed.  Ha! Lightly pencil that one into the WIN column, fate!

As pleased as I was to get the left eye unwrapped enough to see, I sort of knew the right was not to be trifled with.  In the days that followed, my brain started to key into something.  The eye was shut, but I wasn't seeing black.  Nobody said anything to me but as weeks passed and I continued to wear the bandage I started to realize I didn't have a sense of anything over there. How to describe it?  Explain to me what you see out of your shoulder.  It's not that you see black.  It's that your field of vision just doesn't extend to your shoulder.  There's no sense there.  That's what I was seeing out of my right eye.

My eye doctor eventually came to tell me that was that.  Enucleated.  Already a done deal.  Decided and deleted on Day One.  I tried to cry hysterically but it didn't really take.  Might have lasted half a minute.  I knew my fate already.  The tears were just out of respect for the ritual I guess.  And maybe a bit of a send off.  I do still miss my old friend.  A lot.

Broken arm, broken femur (traction), destroyed about half my face (nose and eye), wired jaw, plastic surgery... admitted on June 28th.  I got out about the middle of September.  I was bedridden pretty much the entire stay.  Once I was able to get into a wheelchair, I was ready to go home.

That's a lot of time in bed, so afterwards you're going to have to relearn how to walk.  Atrophy, stiffness, even a loss of balance all take hold.  These days they would have had me in PT, but back then we just had to go do it.  And I did.  Painful and slow at first but I feel like within a month I had it back.  Everything healed up and left me with a few scars.  Chicks dig those.  The eye never grew back.

My brother broke his leg in the accident.  He actually had a hard time healing from that.  It didn't seem to want to set up.  Eventually turned out okay though.  We shared the hospital room for a short time but he wasn't there long.

My parents and relatives did a good job of keeping a young kid distracted from all the atrocities that had punched me so squarely in the face.  I should credit them for that.  A nurse got me an autographed baseball from a few of the star players of the 1978 Dodgers.  I still have it.  They all wrote something personal.  "To a true Yankee fan - but all Dodgers aren't bad.  Steve Garvey". My father would come visit every day after work.  I recognized his gait and the sound of his shoes from down the hall.  He had a steady, confident pace that echoed off the hard surfaces of the pediatric ward.  Every day.  The nurses, mostly, were full of cheery personality.  With headphones on, I listened to a cassette of Frampton Comes Alive about 6,000 times during that hopelessly indoor summer.  Best I could do was get my bed wheeled over to the windows of the... playroom? I guess it was, and I could wait for the Circle Line to turn around at the mid-Hudson bridge.

And for as fucked up as I was, the worst thing I saw there was this kid who had fucked up his hand really bad.  I don't remember how, but he broke most of it.  He showed it to me, and aside from it being a swollen puffball, it had an array of small pins sticking out of it every which way.  That so skeeved me out.  It was bad enough that your hand is in such a vulnerable state, but the CURE only seems to make it MORE vulnerable.  Good God - don't bonk that mess IN to anything!  He was an older teen and I gotta say, to this day I remember him as possibly the coolest person I'd ever met.  Shoulder-length 1970's dirty blonde hair, totally laid back but with a quiet intensity, and some kinda story to tell.  Just surrounded by a force field of cool.  He may have broken his hand in a fight, or defending himself from an assailant trying to steal his riches...  I don't know but this kid had something else going on that the rest of us hadn't figured out.

Of all the shit that happened to me in those 10 weeks of hospitalization, that encounter still stands out strong.  Don't break your hand.  Also, be absurdly cool.

I remember an awful lot of little details about that time, though I can't really say I cherish any of those memories.  Now that I have written some of them down, I don't feel any sense of satisfaction, compartmentalization, or relief that I feel with most of the other thoughts I leave here in my little free association repository.  Maybe the delete button will find its way to this post soon.  Either way, I guess the story is told for whatever that's worth.

Motorcycle Champion