The Neon Nurse's Charting

In my LJ bio I mention the many times I've somehow slipped under Death's radar. This post, inspired by Memory Muse's Word of the Day "bike", recounts one of them.

I learned to ride on a man's ten-speed my dad got cheap from some guy in a bar. At the time (5th grade) I had already attained the giddy heights of my full growth, 5 foot 3 inches. Needless to say, I could not reach the pedals when sitting on the actual bike seat, so I had to improvise. By laying a folded-up throw rug over the crossbar and sort of pedalling by reaching backwards and using my heels, I could propel myself forward the few feet needed to crash over and over again.... Too stubborn to die, that's me all over.

Eventually, due to Mom's employee discount at Western Auto, I got one that was the right size, and I was off. Pulled by a gnawing need for Something Other, pushed by the desire to dodge some of my sub-parental duties from being the oldest of six kids, I roamed on my bike for almost as much time as I read books. In other words, considerable.

Another passion for me at that time was horses. The town we lived in then, Lakewood, was a formerly rural border community trying to become a suburb (of Denver). Both backyard horses and biggish chunks of occupied pasture nestled in between neighborhoods and shopping centers were common. This set-up fueled my doggedly optimistic conviction that I could indeed get My Own Horse, if only *one* of my multitudinous schemes went right for a change.

So one day, when I was way off down some rural road, it seemed perfectly reasonable to stop at the little farm where a sign said "Horses For Sale" and ask to try out the goods. I must have seemed quite confident about having parents ready, willing and able to shell out the bucks, because the owner took me out back and saddled me up a mount. He told me she was a bit fiesty, and ought to be walked a few minutes before really trying her out, but I assured him *I* was in Westernaires (a local riding club) and thus basically knew it all and then some.

You are probably way ahead of me on what happened next. Yes, I got firmly bucked off. I don't know if I hit something other than the hard-packed corral ground or not, but I was hurt and shaken enough to decline a second try at riding, a display of good sense that for me was nothing short ot astounding. The guy was concerned and apologetic, but I brushed off his offers of help, mostly because I wanted to get off and away, just in case I might start to cry. My pride had already been injured enough for one day.

Once I mounted my bike and started my shaky ride home, though, I realized something was wrong. The bike felt hard to steer, and for some weird reason my eyelids kept falling down, no matter how hard I tried to stare straight ahead. It was just like a window blind being lowered across my field of vision, and I had the feeling this was not really a Good Sign.

Riding with my head tipped way back, as though I were somehow trying to see out of my nostrils, didn't help all that much. So I stopped, dropped my bike, and sat down under a tree at the edge of the roadside ditch. I remember thinking with gloomy satisfaction how very SAD everyone was going to be when they got word I was found dead at the side of the road.

But I didn't die after all. Eventually I got up, rode home, and dropped right back into my theoretically normal life without a word to anyone, because I suspected the ratio of yelling at to sympathy would not have been favorable....