FWG takes a tumble

Ouch.

I went down today. Like the proverbial cheap whore.

Like a lead balloon. Like a startled groundhog. Like a homesick mole. Like a domino, a rock, a bottle of Drano. Like Alexei Flop-house Kovalev. Like the Ottawa Senators in April.

In accordance with the De-Tub initiative I went for a walk at lunch today. I stopped at the awesome Gemelli's (Matheson and Orbiter) for a mucho-excellent heaping home-style plate o' roast beef, meatballs, broccoli and asparagus. That and a drink for under ten bucks!

Tummy full of protein and not-so-many carbs I marched back out to the street and headed up Orbiter Drive, gazing at the planes taking off and landing at Pearson Airport and thinking heavy thoughts about the likelihood of the human race lasting long enough - and our dying sun eventually growing hot enough (in it's inevitable red-giant stage) that Triton, ice-covered moon of Neptune, might possibly thaw and become the centre of life for a migrating humankind. Yes. This is the kind of stuff I think about. Call me what kind of freak you will.

So while I'm contemplating the final chapter of human existence in this particular solar system and idly watching a descending plane with a giant green maple leaf on the tail, I'm not watching the sidewalk before me nor the football-size chunk of non-sidewalk mysteriously carved off the edge of it.

Luckily this fascinating sidewalk character-blemish did not permanently escape my notice. Luckily my right foot encountered it, rolling my ankle and pitching me headlong onto the pavement. Three alarms went off immediately. Right ankle. Left knee. Left wrist. Big boys - though big - and this is counter-intuitive I realize - are in many ways more fragile than pulchritudinous normal-sized boys. There's more mass thus more force to the impact.

So I just lay there assessing the damage (Scotty, damage report! Shield status? Hull breach...? Captain, I'm just an engineer! Not a doctor!) while footsteps rapidly approached. Someone was running - actually running - to my aid. She probably thought I'd just had a heart attack or something. She was probably trying to remember which technique would save my life - CPR or the Heimlich maneuver - or else which might be the least unpleasant to attempt on this fallen bearded spheroid.

I'm sure she was relieved to find I'd only taken a tumble and the lending of her cell phone would be the extent of aid required. I thanked her profusely and called my work buddy, Afro-Squeege, to come collect me with his car.

Through the afternoon I realized the knee was not the major concern after all but had suffered merely a flesh wound and that the wrist was rapidly recovering. The ankle though - was clearly swelling and was clearly gonna be a problem. Also my left shoe - a dress-shoe - was scuffed beyond repair all over the toe. I stupidly did not change into runners before the trek as I usually do - so not only did I ruin a pair of office shoes but the runners would have offered much more support and I probably would have come out of the crash in full walking condition.

Loser is me.

Here's the kicker though. You ever injure something but don't feel anything until you finally move some appendage precisely the wrong way?

It's five PM and I limp to the banana cruiser and head on out. I'm singing along to REM's Losing My Religion as I hand-over-hand a tight right-turn out of the parking lot when all of a sudden I'm taking a radical departure from the Michael Stipe lyrics, screaming OWWWWWWWMYFREAKINGJESUSWHATWAS-THAT??? and then looking down to see whether my right forearm is still attached to the elbow or not.

It was. But I drove one-handed from that point on and didn't even play any air-guitar on the way. Not even when Shiny Happy People kicked in.

I'm still shiny and happy, mind you, so don't fret about me, but I'll be licking my wounds for a while it seems.







Please note that the above image is not actually FWG and that FWG did not in fact have both feet severed in the accident. The above image was captured from Werner Herzog's self-described poetic interpretive documentary film titled FWG Versus the Sidewalk.

The magical dancing sea-creatures in the orange Neptunian sky represent the alien-antenna-like-asparagus from Gamelli's and of course the bowl of cereal represents the life-saving cellular network that was FWG's link to Afro-Squeege and eventual salvation.

Okay - it's late. I'm tired and getting stupider by the paragraph. Toodles.

FWG