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Legend of PowerWobble, Part I
The title to this story should read: "How I got the ever-living shit beat out of me on the first day of 7th Grade", but I thought "Legend of PowerWobble" would be more epic.
The summer of '77, the summer between sixth and seventh grade was pretty much like all summers before it. The one difference being as soon as the book closed on that summer I'd be going to a new school.
Public school.
Up until then I had gone to a private school. I was there from kindergarten through sixth grade. It was MY school. It's all I knew.
Having to change to another school, let alone a p(ugh)blic school, was tough. My seventh grade experience was only a truckstop on the highway to hell I'd face a year later in junior high, but I'll save the Jr. High stories for a later time.
The apprehension of going to a new school, not knowing anybody, and being the "new kid" was tough. Only to be made tougher the day before school started.
My best friend Jeffg and I were skateboarders. Skateboards were how we got around, second only to our bicycles.
On the day before school was to start, Jeffg and I were out riding our boards. We decided to head down to TCreep's house. (Sidebar: TCreep was a nice enough guy and all, he just did some things with live animals that tended to creep me out, thus the name TCreep. No offense to you TCreep if you Googled yourself and now you're reading this. By the way TCreep, for your sake I hope God isn't a frog.) TCreep lived around the corner and down a hill. A huge hill. "Cliff" is a more accurate description.
I'm on my red plastic skateboard, the one my mom picked up for me at Roses Department Store several months earlier. Back then skateboards were nothing fancy: some ball bearings, a couple "trucks" off of a rollerskate, and some poly wheels. My mom paid less than five bucks for it. Off on a tangent, sorry.
Anyway, I'm on the red skateboard. Heading to down the hill to Tcreep's. As I reached speed (mach 2 in this case) I noticed the board start to wobble. Then the board lapsed into the dreaded powerwobble. "Now problem." I thought to myself, "I'll just step off." And I did.
That. That was a mistake.
As soon as my right foot hit the ground, I commenced to flip. When I landed the first time, I landed on my back and left shoulder. Breaking my left collarbone and also embedding gravel into my back, neck, and head.
When I finally quit rolling, and bouncing I had debris embedded over my most of my body. Think 70's styled sand candle.
I forgot to mention that I was helmetless, as well as shirtless. Come to think of it, I was probably barefooted too.
As soon as I got up, I knew something was wrong. It could've been the fact that my left shoulder was flopping around down by my navel, or maybe it was the puddles of blood. But I knew I needed help.
I walked over to TCreep's house, like a zombie, 'cause by now I'm starting to go into shock. His mom flakes out, rushes me into the bathroom, so I don't bleed out on her carpet. Then she calls my mom.
I don't remember much between getting the rocks pulled out of me in TCreep's bathroom and the doctor setting the bone in the emergency room. Setting the bone, that I remember.
For the sake of those who haven't broken your clavical, let me clarify something. When you break your collarbone, you don't get a cast. You get a harness, a brace. Think backpack, without the pack. Basically you're in this contraption that pulls your shoulders back, puffs you chest out and basically makes you look all proud and cocky.
Proud and cocky is not a good look for the "new kid" in class.
10/23/2004 08:33:31 PM
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