Sunday, October 10, 2010

Left, Right, and Wrong.

I was that kid, the one who had to learn everything the hard way.  The stubborn one who didn't really listen closely because I was happily doing things my own way.  Living in my blissful oblivion, I even learned right from left the hard way.  Here is my sad tale (wink, wink).

I loved my bike.  It had a banana seat, a horn, a playing card clipped to the spokes, and a basket with big, plastic 70's flowers all over it.  It was blue with the words "li'l gypsy" painted on it.  I think Cindy Brady had a similar bike.  It passed for cool in my estimation.

I could not wait to get home from school and head out on my bike to burn off the pent-up energy, and treat my neighbors to renditions of songs I had learned at summer camp, all sung at the top of my lungs.  For those of you who didn't live in the 70's, little girls wore ugly and garish polyester dresses to school.  We wore tights that gave us our legs a Muppet look and sagged at the ankles by the end of the day.  Under the dress was the obligatory slip, a throwback to the many layers of odd clothing women wore in decades past.  I hated the slip, but Mom made it clear that omitting it was not an option.  Then of course, there was some Mary Jane or Saddle Oxford kind of shoe.  Since my mom apparently relished large piles of laundry, all this wardrobe nonsense was to be discarded upon my arrival home on bus #39, and switched out for equally ugly play clothes, sans slip.  Except I was usually in a hurry, and just tucked that stupid slip into my toughskin pants, threw on a random blouse, and went for my bike.

In the back of my mind, some fuzzy guidance from my mother echoed.  Something about riding my bike in the "right" lane.  There was something important about that, but oh well.  It was more important to me to swerve around pot holes, and pretty much meander any way that suited me.  Plus, I reasoned, "right" is the opposite of "wrong", and how was I supposed to remember right from wrong on such a trivial matter as a neighborhood street?

Now picture me if you will: singing at the top of my lungs, my feet propped up on the handlebars because I was going down a hill at high speed, and leaning into a curve with my view of the road ahead blocked by high shrubs.  Oh yea, it turns out I was in the wrong lane too.  That's when I saw the car.

Whenever I hear of people who have traumatically blocked a memory, I nod in understanding.  I remember seeing a big old 70's whale of a car, the shocked look on the face of the woman driving, and hearing the brakes squeal just like they always did on that cop show we watched on Wednesday nights.  But then I go blank.  I have no memory of my bike going under the car and being twisted beyond repair, no memory of flying through the air across the hood and windshield, and no memory of landing in the street beside the car. 

My next awareness is of actually being in their car, in the back seat.  The driver had two kids who also rode bus #39, and they told their mom how to get to my house.  I was tasting blood, crying like baby, and was sure that death was imminent.  My poor mother, I will not ever forget her face when these people carried me to the door.  If Mom were still alive, I would apologize to her today for having given her such a scare.  I was years away from knowing how frightening life becomes when you carry the love and responsibility of children in your heart.

A nurse friend who lived a few houses away came rushing over.  I got a head to toe exam right there in the living room, and the large crowd that mysteriously and quite suddenly gathered got a big laugh out of the fact that I still had that stupid slip on under my blouse.  Amazingly, not a bone was broken.  The bloody mess on my face was due to a couple of broken teeth.  I would live to ride my bike another day.  Maybe my memory of the accident had been taken by the angel who carried me safely over that car, I may never know.

Long story short, when I had my own kids, I got out a permanent Sharpie, and wrote an R and L on the corresponding hands until they had it figured out.  I wasn't taking my chances.

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