Your Elementary School Teacher Was Right

Long ago, when I was young and foolish, I learned a valuable lesson in chair safety, and I'd like to share that with you hub-people. I was sitting in the break room of my freshman dorm, playing some poker, leaning back in my chair, balanced precariously on the back two legs. Leaning backwards in my chair, challenging fate, seems to be as good a poker strategy as any I’ve tried, as I was doing quite well. Behind me was a closet door, a sturdy wooden thing with big, metal, unnecessarily large hinges jutting out. Naturally, since I was winning and the universe must balance my joy by replacing it with suffering, I suddenly and inexplicably fell backwards. My memory is hazy, but I’m pretty sure my head struck one of those mammoth hinges. I lay there for a second, dazed and a little miffed at the chorus of laughter that had erupted from my fellows. I arose, and put hand to head to discover that I was bleeding heavily. The laughter subsided at this discovery, though I think there still might have been a snicker or two.

Now, everyone with any sense at all knows that one does not take head injuries lightly. So, responsible young adult that I was, I opted to get a few paper towels and hold them to my head while finishing my poker game. It’s a good thing I kept playing, in truth, because this story has an expensive ending. Anyway, my friends soon grew bored of our game, and so I wandered upstairs to show off my profusely bleeding cranium, as though I had received it winning a playoff football game instead of by falling over while sitting in a chair. I do not understand the urge to show off scars and wounds, but it is one that I feel powerfully. I suspect it is linked to testosterone, and perhaps a former life I had as a Viking. A Viking, no doubt, that died of a minor injury because he spent his week parading it around instead of getting it looked at by Viking doctors. Fortunately for me, one of the people I showed it to was a friend who was a sports medicine major. He sagely advised that perhaps I should see someone. I inquired as to whether he thought it could wait until morning, and whether perhaps I could just sleep it off, and he (again sagely) advised that it was best not to procrastinate too long when treating bleeding head wounds. 

Thus, I went to the on-duty RA, who briefly and with some distress  looked at my head to see that it was, in fact, bleeding, and called a campus cop to come take me, with absolutely no fanfare or fuss at all, to the hospital. On the plus side (I think), I got to ride in the back of the cop car, behind the screen which shields the officers from dangerous convicts. For some reason, though I’m unsure as to the exact nature of that reason, I was surprised at how uncomfortable it was. As though it were designed as a little extra jab at any criminals who've been arrested. "You're going to jail. And the ride won't be comfortable, either!" Fortunately, the ride was short, and after a few minutes of extremely awkward small talk with the female campus cop about how I fell backwards in my chair, we arrived.

At the hospital, a similar lack of fuss and fanfare made for a painstakingly unexciting ER visit. It was apparent that every single employee of the hospital believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that my head wound, which I explained in clear and unslurred speech happened because I fell backwards in my chair during a poker game, actually happened because I was intoxicated and/or high. In truth, I wished (mostly for anesthetic purposes) that it was indeed because of alcohol that I had fallen backwards, as when the doctor finally saw me he decided to punish me for my poor chair safety by driving several staples into my skull. As far as I could tell, the only medical effect these had was to cause me incredible pain going in, and to cause me even more incredible pain coming out a week later. In the future, if I ever fall over and crack open my head, you had better believe that I will bring a bottle of scotch with me into the ER. After the staples went in, I was ushered back out the door, with a follow-up staple-removing appointment in a week. The bill? $600: for a ten minute procedure, and what were perhaps platinum staples. The lesson here is that staples are expensive. Also, it is that your Elementary School teacher was right about not leaning back in your chair, even if she was a mean witch. Consider yourself warned.