I don't know if any of you realized it, but 27 years ago yesterday was a momentous day in both U.S. history and the world of Hurricane Mikey.
In case you have forgotten, March 30th was the anniversary of the day that President Reagan was shot. I was in eighth grade at the time, had 7th period gym class, and had just changed into my gym clothes when they made the announcement over the PA system. Of course, some jackass did a "Woo Hoo!" and took an immediate verbal beat-down from one of the gym teachers, and then got to spend the entire hour running laps around the basketball court. Dumbass.
I got home from school a couple of hours later and had to do my paper route for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It was an evening paper at the time, while the now-defunct Globe-Democrat was the morning paper. Anyhow, the papers were sitting in the driveway next to the garage when I got home, and the first hour consisted of me sitting on the floor, rolling them up, and either binding them with a rubber band or stuffing them in a yellow plastic bag, depending on the weather. As I recall, it was a rubber-band type of day.
I didn't turn on the TV, but was listening to the radio--my old favorite station K-SHE 95. Of course, they weren't playing much music, it was all news updates. I distinctly remember them announcing that James Brady had been killed, and then about a half hour later, they issued a correction that he hadn't been killed, but was in deeply critical condition.
Of course, being the evening paper, and having been printed several hours before, there was obviously no news whatsoever in print yet--everything relevant was on the TV and radio, and everyone was consumed by that on that afternoon. But I still had to deliver my papers, so I loaded up my huge canvas tote bag and started doing my walking route around the neighborhood.
About 3/4 of the way through my route, I saw a bunch of my friends riding their bikes at the new construction site across the road from our neighborhood, so I walked over to talk to them for a bit. Of course, we were all told not to play over there--it was supposed to be a dangerous area, and one of my buddies had broken his arm there two weeks before. There was a huge hole where a basement had been dug for a new home, at the base of a large mound of dirt. So we'd ride our bikes off of the dirt hill, down into the 'basement', across the 'floor', and then jump out of the hole on the opposite side, Evel Knievel style, flying about ten feet before trying to control our landing, and having to make hard turn before careening down an embankment next the road below.
It was tricky, and parents freaked out whenever they saw us doing it, as did a few of the local cops, who kept catching us and telling us not to do it--it was much too dangerous. But being 13 and 14 years old, we knew better, and kept riding our bikes over there.
Anyhow, everyone was jumping and showing off, so I set my papers down and used one of my buddy's bikes since there was an impromptu who-can-jump-the-furthest contest. We had a few good showings, but nobody went crazy because you had to account for the possibility of flying off into oblivion and getting run over by the traffic on the road below, so the trick was finding the magic landing spot that was further than anyone else's but still allowed you enough space to remain on the bike upright and off the road.
I, however, disregarded all thoughts of personal safety and went for the world record jump. It was a beauty, too, but about halfway through the air, I realized that I would never stick the landing. So I tried to swing the bike around in mid-air, but my foot slipped off the pedal, and I came down in a heap, with all of my weight and the bike landing directly on my calf.
SNAP. Obviously I had just broken my leg.
Oh holy shiat did that ever hurt. I hit the ground and me and the bike both rolled over the embankment. I was writhing in agony while my buddies all had that oh crap we're in trouble look on their faces. I didn't cry though, and got mad props for the next month because I went down like a man, but my buddy Keith cried like a little girl when he broke his arm there a couple of weeks before. As I was lying there, unable to move, a couple of the other guys took off in an effort to save their own asses, because once word got out that I'd gotten hurt while playing there, some of them would have to take a beating just for being in attendance.
Just a few minutes later, my dad drove by so one of my buddies took off on his bike and chased him down and told him to come back and get me. I had managed to scoot myself down to the side of the road, and my dad found me there, covered in dirt, twigs, and leaves, with a left leg that didn't work.
It was all I could do to stand up and take two steps to the passenger's seat in the car, even with my dad and one of my friends helping me. They grabbed my tote bag with the rest of my newspapers and tossed it in the back seat, and my dad and I drove around delivering the rest of them before heading to the emergency room.
My dad was working for a medical equipment company, so he had some sort of free parking placard that we used to park right in front of the doors of the hospital. He went inside, and just a minute later re-emerged with two nurses and a wheel chair.
They got me into the emergency room, and immediately took me in for an exam and X-rays. I remember it being kind of surreal because there were portable TVs everywhere in all of the rooms so that the staff could watch the news. I also remember them cutting the leg of my jeans all the way from the cuff to the hip and seeing my nasty distended lower leg for the first time.
Not good. It turns out that I'd broken it in two places, but just above the ankle, so I'd get away with only a knee-high cast.
Of course it hurt like a sonofabitch, but I recall the heat from the plaster cast made it feel much better. The entire time I was lying there in the treatment room, we (the doctor, nurses, and I) watched that same disjointed footage over and over again of President Reagan outside the Washington Hilton, where you couldn't see anything but people piling on the assailant and the limo speeding away, which Eddie Murphy made even more famous on Saturday Night Live with his Who Shot Buckwheat? parody.
Anyhow, they gave me a walking cast, a set of crutches, and a bottle of Tylenol with codeine, but said I wouldn't be able to walk for at least a week.
They were right. I spent the next six days on the couch with my foot elevated, and when I bathed, I had to use the tub, but could only sit sideways because the plumbing was on wrong end of the tub--the wall was on the left, so I couldn't use the tub normally. Yep, it truly sucked.
But both the President and I were up and walking around just a week later. I still had to use crutches for another week or so, but soon thereafter could walk on my own. The thing that pissed off my dad was the fact that I had to cut all of my Levis up to the knee to be able to wear pants, and once the cast came off, he had to buy me all new jeans. Well, that, and I broke the cast two more times that month and had to go back in and have a new one put on each time. He didn't like that too much.
But six weeks later, the cast came off for good and I was almost as good as new, except one leg was all pale and scrawny looking compared to the other one. President Reagan was back in the Oval Office, and I was back in gym class.
And that dangerous hole in the ground never claimed another victim. They poured the concrete foundation less than a week after I crashed and burned on re-entry, hauled away the dirt mound, and then put up a fence, too. We had to find a new spot to ride our bikes if we wanted to injure ourselves.
Nowadays, if I get hurt, it's usually from falling down while drunk or bumping my head into stuff. My days being fighting gravity on bicycle ended for good back in March of 1981.
Mikey
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