Ok, so, I was riding my bike to school the other day and somewhere around mile, like, 5.2 out of 9.4 I totally remembered this story. I was also amused at realizing that skunks way out number raccoons, opossum, deer, squirrels and porcupines for road kill on Rte. 96. Like by an easy four to one. So anyway, so, when I was finishing up 6th grade and about to enter Bishop Cunningham Jr/Sr High School my mom thought I might like a summer program. Or rather my dance school didn’t hold classes in the summer, I was in a summer soccer program but it only ran like one or two nights a week for like 6 weeks and she was and is of the mindset that “you’re not just gonna sit around all summer.” So the Oswego Public High School drama and music department was going to start putting on a summer musical and the rehearsals would run during summer school hours. This meant I was going to be occupied and supervised from 8am-12pm every day. Perfect. This also meant I had to ride a school bus for the first time in my life.
I’m sorry what? A bus? With all the public school kids? Minqiua! To put it lightly, I was absolutely freaking terrified. St. Paul’s was in walking distance. I had only been on a school bus for fun and educational school trips with my fellow classmates and friends. Add this to going to a catholic school for the first six years had me convinced of one thing for sure: Anyone who got to go to a school where there was no dress code was surely much cooler than I could ever hope to be. And so after many hours of trials, tears and final decisions on my first day of public school summer session musical theater workshop outfit, I waited outside on the corner of 7th and Hamilton for the big yellow bus. My legs were shaking like a chihuahua on meth and my cheeks were flushed to a lovely subtle bright crimson hue. How would I possibly ever find a seat and who would I talk to for the 25 minutes it was going to take for the bus to cross the Utica Street Bridge? I was sure they could all tell that I was a catholic school girl even though I was wearing tan shorts and something pastel on top. I’m pretty sure I made my mom take me to JCPenney to find something to wear as all I had was plaid skirts and white or blue shirts.
Ok, so not only was the bus full of public high school kids who did not know me and not only did I stumble on to it like some wounded gazelle by the only watering hole surrounded by a hungry pack of cackling hyenas but it was full of kids that were failing their courses and therefore had to go to summer school. And as I was informed of this morning, I am a huge nerd. No matter how much I try to cool myself up with tattoos, name drops and big city living it is apparently obvious to all that I am president of the geek squad and treasurer of the nerd team. So I sat down in the front of the bus which I believe was mistake number 5 at this point (1-4 being tripping on the stairs on the way up, saying thank you to the bus driver, sitting in the seat closest to the bus driver and then turning around and looking at all the truly cool kids sitting on the back of the bus when one of them yelled out “HEY!”). I’m pretty sure it was silent for a solid 10 seconds and then I got hit in the back of the head with something. I’m not sure but it was probably a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Needless to say that I walked home from the high school that day and stopped off at the hospital on the way to tell my mother I would not be riding the bus ever again and that we better come up with plan B pretty quickly. Plan B was my brother Ed’s old Schwinn 10 speed. Fine, no problem. I mean it was not the pink huffy 10 speed that so many an Oswegonian girl was seen tooling around town on but it was wheels and it was gonna get me to my public high school summer session musical theater program without having to ride the bus. As the heroin of our generation said “I loathe the bus.”
Ok, so I start riding my bike in the mornings and the whole what to wear thing is still really hard for me, all the options or lack there of rather is really getting to me. There were two really cool girls, sisters even, in the show with me. The Shanley girls and they befriended me and I wanted to be liked by them because they seemed really nice and popular and they had a pool and well, everyone wanted to be friends with them. So I was. And they had great clothes. Like lots of name brand items. A few years back I was in a play by Megan Mostyn-Brown and she had this great line about “if it’s so important to you I’ll sew an upside down triangle on the ass of your pants and write Guess in pen…….Mom, it’s not the point.” I swear that could have been a direct quote from a conversation between me and my mom.
Anyway this is not about the Shanley girls or my clothes obsessions, this is about my travels and I swore this would have been a short story. So, one morning, I’m on my bike and I’m wearing a sweater vest (yeah you read that right) that my cousin gave me and she had mad style so this was actually really cute and I always got lots of compliments on it and I was gonna be able to wear it in the fall to Jr. High as we had a dress code but not uniforms and it was pastels and kind of slouchy and totally perfect and I just knew that everyone in my show was gonna like it. And I had matching earrings and my hair was kind of working that day (P.S. curly hair is a wicked bitch to deal with when you’re 12 and chock full of hormones). Ok so I go down Hamilton to Syracuse Ave., and over to Utica and I’m headed down Utica and I get to the light at East 1st Street and it’s green and I am going over the bridge and I’m riding in the street because that’s what my father told me was the legal way to ride a bike and all of a sudden…bump. Except it felt more like BUMP!!!! And I go ass over tea kettle off my bike and on to the sidewalk and land face down or rather chin down on the pavement and when I open my eyes they are flush with the barriers of the bridge and I’m looking down at the river below.
So I kind of like hop up. Except my legs don’t really want to work so I sort of stumble around on the bridge and I’m not really sure what just happened but I think I got hit by a car but no one is stopping and I kind of can’t feel anything and can feel all my skin at the same time. So my vision sort of widens because up until that point all I could see was what was directly in front of me and I see my brother’s bike up on the sidewalk, kind of twisted and the chain off and shit and so I pick it up and do what my instincts tell me to do. I stand at the edge of the side walk and stick out my thumb. At this point I’m still not crying and I have no idea what, if anything, is wrong with me other than I just fell off my bike.
I know that my mom is working that morning so I can just go to the hospital but I know my legs won’t walk that far and that I can’t get back on the bike. Pretty instantly a pick up truck stops. A guy in his 20’s gets out and says “I saw that car hit you. I think I can identify it. Here I’ll take you to the hospital.” I wasn’t thinking stranger danger. I was thinking total Blanche Dubois “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” So I told him my mother worked at the hospital if he could just drive me the few blocks there and I let him grab my bike and throw it in the back of his truck. I let him open the door for me and hand me a flannel shirt from under the seat. He said “Here, hold this under your face.” He got in the truck and I started to pull down the visor and he stopped me and said, “maybe wait till we get to the hospital.” At that point I looked down at my pretty pastel sweater vest and saw the red blanket that had seeped onto me.
He pulled up to the hospital, got out, got my bike out, opened the door and asked me if I wanted him to walk me in. I said, no, I’m ok and started walking towards the 5th Street entrance. The 5th Street entrance is not the emergency entrance. The 5th Street entrance is for, like, outpatients and people happily leaving the hospital with their bundles of joy. And in walks me in my near shock state covered in blood. I do what I know to do, I’m on total cruise control. I go to the second elevator bank and hit the button and wait. I get on and hit the floor for the labor/deliver and nursery. I step off the elevator and walk to the door of the nursery where I see my mom in the back with a newborn. I do what I always do when I want her attention I say “Elaine….” She looks up at me and smiles and then I see her face change and I know it’s bad and finally I truly do what I know how to do best, I burst into tears. She brings me back into a bathroom to clean me up and see what the real damage is as there’s just a lot of blood and by the way, I’m still holding this stranger’s flannel shirt to my face.
After some inspection she decides Steri Strips are not gonna cut it and so we go down to the Emergency room where my brother Eric’s high school girlfriend is now working as a nurse. This is good because my mom has to go back up to deliver a baby and I’m pretty scared and have seen the gash in my face and am pretty sure there’s no fixing it. I get put on the table, the nice doctor comes in and the nicer nurse holds my hand while he sews up my chin w/ 8 stitches. He then tells me I have to keep it covered and dry. So not only do I have 8 big ugly black stitches on my face (yeah no plastic surgeon like stitches here) but I have to wear like some sort of gauze or band-aid over it and then, then, then he tells me I can’t get it wet for whatever, 3 weeks or something stupid like that. It was the beginning of summer! All I did on my free time was swim at my gram’s pool, swim at the Nicholson’s pool or swim at the Lake. And did I mention that the Shanley’s had already invited me to their annual awesome, big pool party and Jason Guido was going to be there and I thought he was for sure the coolest thing in Umbro’s. Frankly, I’m amazed I made it through with any social dignity left. But I did. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. Oh, and my mom, she totally got all the blood out of the sweater and I wore it first day of 7th grade and everyone loved it. P.S., I have no idea who the nice hitchhiker picker upper was but thanks man.
