Crash

On saturday night I had an accident while driving home with my scooter. I'll lay it out straight, hoping for it to have a cathartic effect on my guilt trips. It was plainly my fault, I didn't brake on time and drove stright into the back of a blue fiat. Yes, the floor was wet. Yes, the fellow in the car broke abruptly, surprising me. But ultimately it was my fault, I should have been more careful.

I learnt just how soft flesh is when it meets a solid wall of tarmac or metal; tyre rubber or windshield plastic. I learnt just how fast 20 kilometers per hour is. At 20 kmh i survived, causing myself a few superficial injuries, a fairly deep wound on my chin, 2 teeth chipped, one broken and a fractured jaw. Who knows what would have happened if I had crashed at 30 kmh. And may the Lord be thanked for the fact that my helmet actually stayed strapped to my head. It probably saved my life.

Mine is one of the many cases of total amnesia as to what happened in the instants following the crash. I don't have any visual memories of it, but from my wounds, and the position that my scooter and I were in when I regained my faculty to remember I came up with this linear reconstruction of events.

I was braking as much as possible (I had started to brake too late, remember, but once I started I went at it energetically) in order to avert what was going to be an obvious crash, which allowed me to slow down my speed to the above mentioned assumption of 20 kmh. That wasn't enough and I hit straight on the back bumper of the car in front of me. The scooter's back wheel left the ground, going up as the scooter was pivoting on the front wheel. As it was doing that my torso must have been flung forward making my face hit the panel where the various indicators are on my scooter.

My chin, and then my face, were the parts of my sorry body that I absorbed the shock with. My tounge was between my teeth and, omitting further unnecessary details, I'll just say that it paid sorely for its unfortunate position at the time of the crash. Through it, my teeth still had enough momentum when the bottom jaw faction attacked its antipod to match each other in an intese, frontal battle. A tragic waterloo for the bottomers, I must admit. The impact caused a hitherto unseen about of dental debris in my mouth, some of which got swallowed, some of which was spat on my jacket together with conglomerates of blood and spit.

The car was moving forward, and the scooter fell over to the left, quite banged up. I assume I was still on the scooter at this stage, but my memory lapse was still going on preventing me from storing any recollection about it. What I do remember, funnily enough, was my ipod's white earphones covered in blood, scattered on the ground, me sitting up without my helmet on and people asking me whether i was fine. I don't know why, but i checked that my phone was still working and that my wallet was still in my pocket. Affermative in both cases.

From then on I can remember everything, the nice people helping me, my cousing and friend coming to help me deal with all the admin, the twat who claimed to be a doctor asking me stupid questions, then the paramedics, the ambulance, the collar, the silly conversations they were having while i had no idea that stupid collar was so damn uncomfortable, the hospital's smell and its ceiling, the wait. More waiting. Then my dad's face when he saw I was ok. And that was good, I knew it would be just the calm before the storm, but it was a calmness and familiarity I thoroughly enjoyed.

I'll spare you the rest. The cathartic effect this blog was meant to have failed to happen, I still think I'm an idiot who could have lost a lot more than his self-esteem over... god i don't even know what to call it... a lapse of concentration???

Luck or what not, I'm happy it played itself out like this. Maybe even grateful, but towards whom, I'm still not sure.