Not All Who Wander Are Lost
Every summer Celotex would shut down for one week for maintenance and all those not working maintenance would have one week of vacation if they had any vacation time accrued. One year when I worked in the lab I was working swing shift before the shut-down. I had ridden my motorcycle to work that last day before the shut-down. As I was on my way home a couple of dogs ran across the road in front of me. I hit one of the dogs and went over the high side. (over the handlebars) I bounced and rolled for a ways on the blacktop. After my head cleared, I took stock of my situation. My jeans were torn at the knees and I had a broken finger. I managed to get the bike back up and gathered my stuff and rode the rest of the way home. (A little over a mile.) The wind on my knees really stung, so I drove slowly. Also the handlebars were cocked. When I got home around midnight, The Old Lady looked at me and said go in the bathroom and we'll see about getting your clothes off. When she saw how torn up I was, she called my uncle and he came and drove us to the ER at the hospital. Both knees were torn up and one elbow. There was a patch the size of my hand on the small of my back where a couple layers of skin were scrapped off. As the doctor sewed me up, I asked why I could feel the stitches. He said for about 10% of people local anesthetics don't work. (Which would explain the pain I suffered several years before when the bolt to repair my broken leg was removed under a local!!) After patching my knees and elbow, they were turning me and asking if there was any more damage. I kept saying, "I broke my fucking finger." (Middle finger, right hand.) They basically ignored that, but in the end they did put a band-aid on it as it was bleeding around the nail.
It took about 5 weeks to recuperate. During that time we needed someone to drive us when we needed to go to town until I got to where I could bend my knees and could drive again. The doctor asked me after a couple weeks if I thought I was ready to go back to work and I replied I can't go back to work until I can ride a bike. The doctor said you aren't getting back on your motorcycle are you? I said I have to ride a bicycle at work.
The Old Lady had driver ed in high school, but never got a license. Recently she mentioned one of the cars her father had she was not able to drive. That may explain why she never got her license and when she went off to college in the big city she didn't need to drive as there was public transportation.
My accident happened in August and when school started in the Fall she signed up for driver ed as part of adult ed. After the driver ed course she got her license. She wanted to learn how to drive a stick and my car was an automatic. My cousin had a junkyard and he had gotten an old Ford pickup with a standard transmission. It was a '60 Ford half ton with a 6 cylinder engine and a three speed column shift. Once she learned to drive it, she loved that truck. One year I had decided the truck had too many problems and was too rusted, so I parked it. One time when I got home after being gone working during the week, it had a new plate on it. She had gone down and got plates for it and we drove it for another year. Ocasionally she still mutters about how I sent it to the crusher.
