Accident-prone

"Why did you fall?" the nurse asked me.  I guess just telling her I hit my head on a concrete wall wasn't enough information.

"Well, I had been drinking..."

"Okay.  Was this in any way related to domestic violence?  Did someone push you?"

"Nope.  I just fell."

Less than three weeks after college graduation and I was in Urgent Care in Novato.

"Do you drink a lot?" the doctor asked me when he came in.

"No, not a lot... I mean, I had a lot that night..."

I can understand why the doctor at Novato Urgent Care would think I drink a lot, though.  Less than three months earlier I had been in this same Urgent Care, this same room even, with another drinking-related injury.  The first day of Spring Break I had come into Urgent Care on my way to my aunt's beach house just to make sure I hadn't broken my foot when I fell in a parking lot the night before.  A few quick x-rays determined that there was no break; I had just torn some ligaments.

I was lucky this time, too.  The doctor told me I did not have a concussion, which was a relief.  That might be the reason Novato has my favorite Urgent Care: they always give me good news, and it never takes more than half an hour.

Last time I went to Urgent Care in San Diego, though... wow.  I guess the San Diego Urgent Care wasn't too bad; it was really the Emergency Room that kept me waiting.

The week of my 21st birthday I was having some serious trouble breathing, so my friend Julianne took me to the Urgent Care.  They didn't have the equipment to run the necessary tests, so he redirected me to the Emergency Room.  Six hours in the ER revealed that I did not have a pulmonary embolism (thank God!), but just had some swelling around my lungs.

Three trips to Urgent Care may seem like a lot, but this is something I have done my whole life.  The first trip I remember was to the Urgent Care in Sonora when I was 11 after I had gone off a water slide into a 3" rusty nail.  I remember grabbing my foot and pulling out what I thought was a twig.  After an emergency tetanus shot and walking on the side of my foot for a few days, though, I was fine.

My trips to the Urgent Care started before I was even a year old, my mom tells me.  I have been to Urgent Care facilities in Lodi, Sonora, Eureka, San Diego, and Novato.

A couple years ago I was sitting in a doctor's office after I had fallen at a park in Eureka (not drinking related) and the doctor was taking a look at my medical history.  "Are you accident-prone?" he asked me.

I laughed.  Accident-prone.  I guess you could say that.

Pre-tequila shots and pre-hitting my head. With Julianne, who has gone with me to Urgent Care twice.

Packages, Nuts, Balls, and Big Ones

After I graduated from college, I didn't want to go back home to Eureka right away.  I couch surfed for a little over two weeks, but then finally decided it was time to spend some time with my family.  I met up with my mom and we spent the night at my aunt's house in San Rafael before heading up to Humboldt County.

We ended up talking about what I am going to do now, where I should apply for jobs, and then I remembered my student loans.

"Don't worry about it," my Mom said.  "You really don't have to pay back that much."  Then she started talking about my brother, who goes to the school I just graduated from.  Apparently he will have even more debt than I do when he finishes college in two years.

"But he just got a letter about financial aid.  I'm not sure how much he's getting, though; I want to see his package!"

Within seconds we were cracking up.  This isn't the first time my mom has said something that could have been interpreted in more than one way, either.

Once my mom was grocery shopping and confronted a worker in one of the aisles and asked him a question.  "Excuse me, sir, where are your nuts?"

But "like mother, like daughter" the saying goes.  I have had many accidental inappropriate utterances of my own.

Once I was playing bingo at a campground with a few friends.  Any serious bingo player knows that many different formations are used to make the game more interesting.  Instead of just a line, sometimes players aim to mark all four corners, an X, or many other shapes. 

This particular game we were trying to make the shape of a field goal.  In addition to the field goal shape, we needed to have one space marked to look like a football going through the goal. 

There are six spaces that will work for the football, so it's really not that hard to get, but when I marked one of the spaces I was excited nonetheless.  "I have a ball!" I told my friends.  They didn't share my enthusiasm, but when the next number called was another one of those six spaces inside of the field goal, I got even more excited.

"I have two balls!"  I yelled.  My friends looked away and acted like they didn't know me.

Another story along these lines, perhaps my favorite, occurred a couple months ago at a McDonald's.  I was there with two guy friends and two girl friends.  Both of the guys got french fries, and I don't really like fast food so I didn't buy anything. 

Of course, though, when my friend was sitting across from me eating his small fry, I stole some.  After we had been sitting there talking and eating for a while, my other guy friend pulled his fries out of his bag, which is when I saw that he had bought a large fry.

"Why have I been eating his when you have a big one?!" I exclaimed.  And immediately realized I shouldn't have said that to two college guys.

I guess these things are just inevitable these days.  "Package didn't mean that back in the day," my mom told me on our drive back to Eureka yesterday.  One of the interesting things about modern English, I realized, is that almost any word can be interpreted as either phallic or a yonic.  And mostly phallic, since we do live in a phallocracy (thanks, Lit Theory).

So I don't think that I say these things is really my fault.  It's really the fault of our language.  Maybe I should start talking a little bit more quietly, though...