In the years since this column first appeared in print, I’ve related innumerable tales of mishaps, near misses, brushes with death and temptings of fate, most culled from personal experience. From the morning my son’s skateboard landed me in the emergency room to the afternoon I nearly lost a thumb cutting two-by-fours on my “modified” table saw, few embarrassing disasters have gone unreported.
Though accident prone, I consider myself imminently likeable, if not downright cuddly. Despite this – and based on reader mail – folks just seem to love columns dealing with situations in which I am nearly killed. Especially those situations brought on by my own alleged lack of common sense.
It has reached the point, in fact, that every time I put hammer to thumb instead of nail, someone will chime in (as I hop around in circles muttering every filthy word I know), “Oh well, maybe you’ll get a good column out of it.”
I was in the hospital a while back, with “mysterious” pains in one leg. According to the doctor, it could have been nothing more serious than muscle strain. Or it could have been a blood clot, which might at any moment break free, work its way to my heart, and kill me.
The doctor’s primary concern? That I spell his name right should I live long enough to write a column about it. Don’t get me wrong; he’s a good doctor and also a personal friend, but at that moment the letters I would have used to spell his name can’t be printed in a family newspaper. At least not in the order I was considering.
At any rate, he saved my life like he always does; by applying leeches, burning some incense and waving a rattle around, so I owe him for that. (Did I mention we’re friends?)
The reason I’m thinking about this (some might say obsessing) is because I had yet another “column-worthy” calamity last week: A car squished me.
Well, it didn’t actually squish me, but it did catapult me briefly into a near-Earth orbit, broke at least two of the toes on my left foot (including the big one, which, it turns out, I use a lot), and scraped most of the skin off my left hip. It also ruined a perfectly good pair of bicycling shorts, which were seriously abraded at the same time as the hip skin.
To make matters worse, the accident was nobody’s fault but my own.
I was riding my bicycle – in 1976, a state-of-the-art Fuji touring bike, now an antique – to pick up the mail. The sun was shining, the sparrows were singing, my front tire was headed toward a small patch of gravel, and I was only taking note of the sun and birds. I may have been humming the old Disney tune, “Zippity Doo Dah,” but I don’t remember for sure.
Short story shorter: The tire hit the gravel, the bike hit the curb, I spilled left, the car hit my hip, I flew, the bike flew, we both landed, hard, and the car screeched to a halt, stopping inches from the point where my head rested on the pavement. I said some very unflattering things about God, the universe and the sons of fatherless mothers, none of which I meant or would repeat in front of my own mother.
The driver of the car, an elderly gent with a very surprised expression on his face, jumped out of his Buick and asked if I was OK.
“I’ll know in a minute,” I said, struggling to my feet. Then, “Yeah, I guess I’m alright.”
“You sure?” he asked, sounding doubtful.
Several streams of blood had begun to run down my left leg with alarming copiousness, I had enough gravel embedded in my hip to install a rock garden somewhere, and my big toe was pointed in a direction it has never pointed before.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said.
After more assurances, the driver took off, happy, I am sure, that he would not be involved in a vehicular manslaughter investigation.
The rear tire of my beloved Fuji was bent into a shape I can only describe as “taco-esque,” but I managed to half-push, half-carry it the few blocks home.
The attending physician (who, mercifully, had never read my column) patched me up, wrapped my broken toes and applied antiseptic solution to my various boo-boos.
When I got back to the house, I called The Lovely Mrs. Taylor at the office to let her know why I would not be picking up the mail.
“Well, keep your feet up until I get home,” she said, adding, by way of sympathetic gesture, “Maybe you’ll get a good column out of it at least.”
My editor, Erin – an otherwise wonderful person – said the same thing when I called her a few minutes later. In fact, everyone who’s heard the story in the past week has said the same thing, verbatim. Good column, good column, good column.
Well, friends, listen up: I don’t want a good column! I don’t want a funny story to tell my grandchildren. What I want is an unbroken toe, a gravel-free butt, and a bike tire shaped like a donut instead of a taco. What I want is to experience fewer close encounters with the Grim Reaper.
Still, I know folks are only trying to be supportive, helpful. And I probably will continue to write columns about my minor disasters. (Like this one, for instance.)
In truth, it’s only Mrs. T’s “it’ll make a good column” comment that really has me concerned. See, she’s hoping against hope that someday I’ll be “discovered” by some big shot New York editor, who will offer me loads of money to move to Manhattan and write for a publication there. From there, I’ll make the leap to books, and the Big Novel will get published. Then the screenplay. The money will roll in. Mrs. T will spend her days shopping for shoes instead of working in an office.
But all this can only happen if people read what I write. And like I said earlier, folks really seem to enjoy the “disaster” stories. So is it possible, I wonder, that Mrs. T is “arranging” accidents so I’ll have something to write about?
It seems unlikely, but not altogether impossible.
I wish I’d gotten the name of that driver. Or thought to ask him who he was working for.
To reach Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or the number of a good personal injury attorney, e-mail mtaylor@midmich.net or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.
Comments