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Blundering Through a Motorcycle Accident; In the Living Room

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[November 03, 2010]  As the four year anniversary of one of my dumber accidents arrives I am reminded that regardless of age, I continue to have crazy things happen in my life.

This personal blunder started mildly enough. An aunt had died who had just received from Medicare a mini-scooter so she could putt around her neighborhood without having to extend herself physically. The scooter was a small knockdown version of what most scooters are like and after a quick disassembly, would easily fit in a normal car's trunk for transport. Now my son Timothy has Cerebral Palsy and uses a full size scooter to get around sometimes. The thought of having this tinier version available for shopping and travel excursions grabbed my interest so we bought it from the estate at a fair price. This is where the blunder began.

My aunt had never really used the little thing so the batteries were dead and needed to be re-charged. The owner's manual explained that new batteries needed to be worked and drained and then charged back up in order to get them working properly. This meant draining them after we got them re-charged and I volunteered myself to be in charge of running the batteries down.

Now the weather had already turned for the worst around here so I decided to drive the scooter on the NASCAR sanctioned indoor track I have in my home.

I didn't prepare myself properly however for this upcoming race against all the best drivers in the world who I imagined would be in the race with me. No goggles, no fire retardant suit. Worst of all I failed to don a flak jacket. I will explain in a moment.

The Mike Fak Memorial Indoor Racetrack is a fairly simple course. A double living room straightaway with a left turn into the front foyer, another left turn down the hallway into a quick double chicane area where the stairway and a sideboard make for a close fit and then a sharp turn back into the straightaway.

Without preparation and little thought as always, I hopped on this baby and the race had begun. For a while things were going fine. Of course in my mind I was in the lead as I further distanced myself from the competition. The little scooter that bragged of going up to eight miles an hour was proving itself well. With the wind in my face I saw no way I wasn't going to win another, "Mikey-is-an-idiot" trophy

On one of the laps, I saw Jackson the cat sitting on the stairs. I could tell from her look she wanted me to stop and place her on my lap but I couldn't. My estimates showed that a pit stop right then might cost me the race and I couldn't do that. Not with victory so close at hand.

And then came what all professional racers dread: the accident.

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Coming out of turn three, I mean the hallway, back into the living room, I cut the scooter too tightly and it tipped over. Now only at this one point in the track are their any external obstacles that might be considered as dangerous. A built in bookcase with a lower protruding shelf of drawers carries a sharp oak edge about 18 inches off the ground. For many years that edge had been protected with a bath towel as my son toddled and bumped and banged around the house. Oh if only that towel was still there. What was my wife thinking taking that towel off the corner? Especially since there was still a clumsy kid in the house.

According to the coroner's report which he regrettably did not get to file, "At 3:32 p.m. The owner of the home after flying off his handicapped scooter landed squarely on the corner of the bookcase, cracking two ribs and extensively bruising his back muscles. Regrettably I was not able to perform an autopsy on this man who needs to be put out of his misery”

As an eye witness to the accident, I can fill you in with better details. First off I felt my entire ribcage, go forward and slam into the front of my chest skin and bounce back hard. I heard things crunching and was in so much pain I thought at first I would have to be carted away in an ambulance.

Yelling feebly for my wife, she came slowly enough with the first question she always finds it necessary to ask when I beg her to come quickly. "Are you really hurt or just screwing around again?" When I advised her I was indeed severely damaged goods she told me the cookies would be done in three minutes and she recommended I change my underwear before we go to the emergency room.

Now anyone who ever cracked ribs, and my cracks were dandies, knows everything is fine as long as you don't sneeze or cough or breathe. As my luck would have it I caught a winter cold which made for a very long several weeks of heeling

As I approach the four year anniversary, I am thinking of putting up a commemorative bronze statue at the crash site. My wife doesn't care although she recommends the statue be an opposite of Rodin's "The Thinker".

[Mike Fak]

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