"Fuck, fuck, fuck," I said, clutching my knee, as a writer I've admired for a decade looked down at me with a shoe in his hand. My shoe. An hour later, I was lying prostrate on a stretcher in the emergency room of an Albany, New York hospital. This, then, was my Wednesday.
I wish I was making this up as an amusing anecdote to lead into a column about funnybooks, but this time the anecdote is the column. And I feel really bad about leading off with the f-word, especially since a very nice reader recently, politely mentioned that he wished I used less profanity. But as the pain seized me and I began to feel a wave of nausea, all I could say was, well, the f-word. A number of times. What a way to end an interview with a well-respected writer.
Last week, after weeks of thinking about making this call, I phoned Mark Freeman, a Washington County, New York resident who writes a column for the local newspaper, the Glens Falls Post-Star. In previous radio jobs, I had turned to Mark a number of times for interviews and commentary on education issues. He is a former teacher and his columns, while frequently dealing with local issues, reveal a brilliant, logical mind and a heart committed to social justice. He's also a bit of a curmudgeon, which is why his column, and he, are called "The Washington County Curmudgeon."
One of my jobs at the radio station is producer and host of Midday Magazine, a daily one-hour news program that features a different commentator each day. I've thought for some time that Mark Freeman would be a brilliant addition to the program, and despite the promise of zero pay (this is public radio, remember), Mr. Freeman gracioiusly agreed to drive to Albany to take part in the program.
After conducting a 15-minute interview with him, focusing mainly on the current war in Afghanistan (and a bit on the President's inability to properly eat a pretzel), I turned off the microphones and just then, noticed another station staffer trying to get my attention through the studio window. I looked at my watch, and realized that I had forgotten to go into the on-air studio at 10:35 AM for a one-minute preview of what was coming up today on Midday Magazine. I got up and moved toward the door, but didn't realize that the headphone cord was wrapped around my leg. As I opened the door, the cord ran out of slack, and I flew through the door, landing hard on my knees and my head hitting the wall on the opposite side of the hall. That's when the profanity came in.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," I moaned. I knew that I hurt, but couldn't exactly pin down where. I knew I'd hit my head, and I couldn't find my glasses, but I wasn't sure where exactly I'd hurt myself. Mark Freeman was standing over me, holding my shoe (which had apparently slipped off in the fall), and telling me not to move. Soon, many of the station's staff were running to see what had happened. I wanted to get up (although my entire right leg seemed to hurt), but everyone kept telling me not to move. I felt really, really stupid. Embarassed. But I had regained enough presence of mind to stop swearing in front of my guest commentator.
Soon enough, EMTs were on the scene, and I felt more and more ridiculous as they poked and prodded to be certain I hadn't broken any major bones or lost consciousness. Still, no one would let me get up. Then they put a splint on my right leg (which still hurt, although substantially less than it had at first), and assisted me to my feet. As nice as it was to be standing upright, within two seconds they guided me back down onto a stretcher, someone handed me my shoe and my coat and I was rolling backwards through the front office and out onto the frozen Albany morning. Brr.
As I spoke to the EMT who rode in the back of the ambulance with me, I realized I had felt like this only once before: In 1985, when I crashed my car, and went into shock almost immediately afterward. A check of my blood pressure revealed it had shot up about 40 or 50 points higher than usual, and I felt quite a bit like I was only partly there in the ambulance. Detached, disconnected. And yes, more than a little embarassed at how stupid I felt. But as the radiologist who later x-rayed me pointed out, they don't see a lot of people who brag about how really smart they were acting just before their accident happened.
In the fullness of time, my minor knee injury was cleaned and bandaged, I had x-rays taken, and came to the near-certain conclusion that my knee felt well enough that I would be able to walk out of there. There was much waiting and laying on a stretcher in various halls as the process went on, but I can't complain at all about how I was cared for by the staff. They were all professional and in good spirits, and come to find out, the doctor who checked my knee and signed my release papers is a listener to my radio show.
It's now about 24 hours since this ridiculous accident happened, and my knee and my toe both are giving me some discomfort, but I am able to walk and that's a good thing as far as I am concerned. It was not that long ago that I wrote a column hoping for better health in 2002 than I experienced in 2001, and believe me, the irony of that hit me about as hard as I hit the floor yesterday at work.
I hope to have some reviews for you soon, but as you can imagine, this incident put a bit of a crimp in my new comics day this week. Figures, don't it?