Dogs, Mini Vans, and Emergency Rooms

As you will soon find out if you continue to read Life (Almost) Factual, I am a extremely clumsy person. Some people will read that last sentence and think it is the first of many exaggerations, but I, Indi, hereby swear to you that I truly am a genuinely clumsy person. To prove my point further, I will type the exact same sentence again to reiterate the severity of my clumsiness. As you will soon find out if you continue to read Life (Almost) Factual, I am a extremely clumsy person. My friends will ask me sometimes when my clumsiness truly began and to be honest I'm pretty sure it started while I was still in my mother's womb. Of course there is no way to know that for sure, but it is always possible right? One thing I do know, is that my clumsiness had already developed greatly by the time I had reached six years old. No amount of knee scraping could prepare me - or my mom - for that fateful day...



I have always been a pretty large person. When I was born I weighed ten pounds, eleven ounces and even though I am now a rather skinny guy, I am still tall. But for some reason being large has never stopped me from being absolutely terrified of dogs. I realize this is an irrational fear for the most part, but there are SOME truly scary dogs!

It was my best friend's sixth birthday and I was at his house waiting for his party to start. I was there more than three hours early of course because we were the best of friends and Mother wanted to drop me off to have some time to herself. The party was to start at 4:00 in the afternoon and I'm not sure why but Mother showed up to get me at 2:00. (my guess is I peed my pants but I honestly cannot remember) Whatever the cause of the unusually early arrival may be, I reluctantly left my best friend's house and started walking toward my mom's lipstick-red mini van.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a rather unhealthy fear of dogs. Especially large ones. To my dismay, there was a very large dog that just so happened to be marking his territory in between my point of origin (my friend's house) and my destination (my mom's lipstick-red mini van). Because of my fear of dogs, what in all likelihood looked like this:

in my head actually looked like this: 

only picture it as a black lab like the top picture. Needless to say I was scared beyond belief. It was at this moment that if I had not previously peed my pants, it didn't matter anymore. With freshly wet pants and a giant rabid monster dog in between me and my helpless mother, I had nothing to do but scream and run as fast as I could in the opposite direction. Now remember, as a six year old, my voice was anything but developed so as I screamed like a little girl, the rabid monster dog misunderstood what I was trying to communicate. When I took off running around to the back of the house the large dog accepted my escape plan as a challenge. Of course, I could not run very fast as a young kid so it was not long before the demon possessed dog tackled me to the ground and tried to eat my face off using his slimy pink tongue of destruction. This - reasonably - did nothing but solidify my fear in wild beasts and sent me running back toward the mini van when I finally made it to my feet.

Before I knew it, my target was close. I could taste victory. I was within ten feet of my mom's mini van and had shown the dog who was boss. I knew I had defeated the demon dog and everybody would soon be thanking me for delivering their souls. I had done all this and only gotten a spot of grass stain on my jeans and some poisonous saliva on my face. I was a champion.

The mini van was three feet away. Just as I thought I was smooth enough to throw a victory dance into my run I hit the car port and tripped on concrete. It was OK. I just survived an attack from Satan himself as a K-9 incarnate. It was as this thought went through my head that I felt a more tangible object going through my head. The tangible object a great deal more painful. When I tripped on the concrete I went head first into the corner of the sliding door on Mother's mini van. The result being a inch and a half long gash two inches in front of my temple. Because I was a champion and could not show sign of failure,  I proceeded to stand up as my mother came rushing around to see if I was OK. I don't exactly remember what happened next other than the fact that just as I stood up I was hitting the ground again due to being tackled by the demon dog from behind. (funny. I just said I couldn't remember exactly what happened and then typed exactly what happened...) As the concrete hit my face my world went black.

After drifting in and out of consciousness to my mom driving like a maniac and my best friend's mom holding ice and a red paper towel on my face, (I later came to the realization that they do not make red paper towels and it was most likely my blood) I arrived at the emergency room. We checked in (or whatever it is technically termed when one yells "Help my baby!! He's gonna die if he doesn't see a doctor now!!!!" at the receptionist) and sat down to wait on a doctor to be free to examine me. I am still not sure why they could not examine the dying six-year-old savior of the nation from all rabid K-9's in less than three hours, but late that evening, we finally got called back into a small cubicle for me to be examined.

The doctor looked at me for a while and eventually decided that I needed stitches. I will admit that at the time stitches sounded fun. This could be either my traumatic experience confusing me or the fact that my mother told me they were going to "sew me up like Granny sews buttons on my shirts." As the doctor stuck his first needle into my profusely bleeding battle wound, I found out otherwise. If the dog would have been in the emergency room, he would have taken this high pitched scream as double or nothing on the last challenge. To escalate the pain of the needle, a nurse came in and asked Mother to step outside of the room. I still am not 100% sure what was said outside that emergency room cubicle, but judging by the muffled yells and the look on my mother's face when she told me later that she had been accused of abusing me I am guessing the nurse got an earful.

When Mother returned to the cubicle to hold the hand of a dog defeater and offer moral support, the doctor finished stitching me up. It was definitely not a very comfortable experience but I was feeling better enough to go show my stitches to all my friends at the party and prove to them that I had conquered death and a two ton demon dog all in the same day. After arriving late at the party, I immediately ran toward the group of miniature sized people I called friends, tripped, and fell face first into a wall.

I feel like now would be a wonderful time to repeat a particular sentence. And since it is my blog, I will do as I please. As you will soon find out if you continue to read Life (Almost) Factual, I am a extremely clumsy person. Now that I have typed this sentence three times, and given you (mostly) factual evidence, I fully expect zero surprised faces when you read posts to come about my clumsiness (seriously, I have so many I will probably get tired of writing about them).

**UPDATE: We never did figure out exactly where I hit my head on the van. Because of the red-lipstick color, blood tended to blend in.

**UPDATE2: I asked Mother this morning, and apparently the nurse based her accusations on the fact that my wound resembled an ice-pick wound. Who knew?