15 + 27 points
The Callouses on Your Hands by APR dreamlands
September 20th, 2010 10:04 PM
I shall relate two stories of clumsiness and woe from my life, one new and one old. These stories tell of marks still left on my body to this day. The mark from the old one will surely stay with me for the remainder of my days, the mark from the new is less likely to remain that long. In the tradition of all great stories, I shall add a fabrication to each, making the story grander in scale. I task each reader with either identifying the fabrication in one of the two stories, or adding a new embellishment to one of the stories to help turn it into legend. If someone has already made an embellishment to the story you choose, add your embellishment to the resulting story.
We shall begin as time did, with the old injury. This story harks from nearly 20 years ago, when I was just a lad.
I had just received a call from my neighbor, inviting me over to play (what we were going to be playing is lost in the sands of time). I, in my exuberant youth, quickly threw on some socks and shoes, and yelled "I'm going over to John's" to my mother as I was running out the door. I sprinted down the front stairs, and across the lawn towards the street. When near the street, I ran across the relatively shallow ditch. Near my home, you see, we did not have the luxury of curb or gutter, only a ditch to take the runoff of the street. Said ditch was perhaps 2 feet deep with shallow sides gently sloping down to it. As I was running, I misjudged the slope of said ditch and started to lose my balance. Since I had great momentum, I was unable to stop myself moving forward, so I continued a couple of wobbly steps forward, where I hit the upslope. This caused even more loss of balance, and I only made perhaps one or two more steps before I fell, the cap of my knee falling on one of the stones of pavement that made up the very rough, crumbling edge of the road. Since this happened in the springtime in rural northern Indiana, there was still cinder (slag from the steel mills mixed in with the salt to provide grit traction in the winter) on the edge of the road. In rural parts, the street sweeper does not come for many months after winter, due to limited budget.
Crying out in pain, I run back into the house, blood profusely rushing down my leg from my knee. I stormed into the house crying, and my mother asks what is wrong. Being in too much shock to say anything, just cry, I rush down to the laundry room, where I had heard her voice calling from. When she sees my whole leg covered in blood, she immediately thinks my whole leg is torn asunder. As she starts to clean it, however, she notices that the blood below the knee is just what has been running out of the knee wound. She quickly gets triple antibiotic cream, and clean gauze from the first aid kit. She then cleans the wound as best she can, noticing that there is still gravel and cinders in the wound, and puts on antibiotic and the gauze. She then calls my general physician, and tells him that I have just tripped on the road, and she noticed gravel in the wound. She would like the doctor to look at it as soon as possible. The doctor tells her that he should be able to look at it as soon as we can get there. My mom then rushes me into the car (still crying), and proceeds to drive me the 30+ minutes to the doctor's office. We are taken into the back almost as soon as we arrive. I have since mostly stopped crying, and am down to just having tears in my eyes. The doctor walks into the room, and undoes the dressing. He exchanges some quiet words with my mom, she nods, and he immediately goes to work. The first thing he does is get a relatively small, but stiff, brush out, puts some kind of bright yellow antibiotic (or soap) on the brush, and starts scrubbing the gravel and cinders out. How long all this takes, I cannot remember, because it was such an excruciating experience. After he is done getting out all of the gravel, he puts on a clean dressing, and gives my mom some instructions on how often to change it, etc. He then hands her a few suckers to give to me at a later time, and gives me one for now. Since I am once again crying, I do not open it right away, but instead do so on the way home. After making it home, I am confined to the house, so I don't go tearing the bandage off, for the rest of the day, and my mom goes about cleaning the spots of blood I had dripped across the house as I ran through. After my wound had healed, I was made to wash the dishes after every meal for one month, for dripping blood across the house, but it was only enforced for a week since it was a rare occasion that it was probably best I tracked the blood across the house.
Now I shall relate the newer of the two stories, this one having occurred a scant two months ago:
One day, after work, I decided that it would be a great day for a bike ride. My friend Thomas and I made plans to meet, and set a route of about 15 miles. Once we got started, it was pretty clear that my friend Thomas was a much faster rider than me, but he often stopped and waited for me, and occasionally rode behind me. The planned route involved quite a few right turns, to save having to cross traffic to get where we wanted to go. It was a loop route, which would leave us at about 7 miles away from my place at the farthest. At this point there was a right turn, and it was one of the rare times I was in the lead. I signaled for the right turn as I was slowing down, and accidentally squeezed the brake too hard. I locked up the tire, and the front wheel cut on me. I fell to my left onto a road that had just been ground down to be resurfaced. I was not wearing any gloves, so my palm was quite torn up, and I also scraped my left arm, and left leg. The leg injury was minor scrapes, but the arm was more serious. I got up, happy that there was no traffic behind us when I spilled into the roadway, and started to feel myself out for the injuries, to see if I was well enough to ride back. I decided to do so, and rode back to my place, where Thomas helped me put my bike away, and made sure that I got the wounds basically cleaned up and that none were too serious.
Everything seemed to be relatively OK, so he went on his way back home, and I put on a makeshift bandage, since I was in no mood to go out and get real medical supplies. I used paper towels, triple antibiotic, and electrical tape to form a makeshift bandage until I was willing and able to go to the store to get proper supplies. Here is how the injury looked at about 4 hours after the incident:
After a couple weeks of proper bandages with regular redressing, the wounds had healed, and they currently appear as shown above.
Now it is your turn to either catch me in my web of lies, or to add your own touch to make me out to be more heroic.
We shall begin as time did, with the old injury. This story harks from nearly 20 years ago, when I was just a lad.
I had just received a call from my neighbor, inviting me over to play (what we were going to be playing is lost in the sands of time). I, in my exuberant youth, quickly threw on some socks and shoes, and yelled "I'm going over to John's" to my mother as I was running out the door. I sprinted down the front stairs, and across the lawn towards the street. When near the street, I ran across the relatively shallow ditch. Near my home, you see, we did not have the luxury of curb or gutter, only a ditch to take the runoff of the street. Said ditch was perhaps 2 feet deep with shallow sides gently sloping down to it. As I was running, I misjudged the slope of said ditch and started to lose my balance. Since I had great momentum, I was unable to stop myself moving forward, so I continued a couple of wobbly steps forward, where I hit the upslope. This caused even more loss of balance, and I only made perhaps one or two more steps before I fell, the cap of my knee falling on one of the stones of pavement that made up the very rough, crumbling edge of the road. Since this happened in the springtime in rural northern Indiana, there was still cinder (slag from the steel mills mixed in with the salt to provide grit traction in the winter) on the edge of the road. In rural parts, the street sweeper does not come for many months after winter, due to limited budget.
Crying out in pain, I run back into the house, blood profusely rushing down my leg from my knee. I stormed into the house crying, and my mother asks what is wrong. Being in too much shock to say anything, just cry, I rush down to the laundry room, where I had heard her voice calling from. When she sees my whole leg covered in blood, she immediately thinks my whole leg is torn asunder. As she starts to clean it, however, she notices that the blood below the knee is just what has been running out of the knee wound. She quickly gets triple antibiotic cream, and clean gauze from the first aid kit. She then cleans the wound as best she can, noticing that there is still gravel and cinders in the wound, and puts on antibiotic and the gauze. She then calls my general physician, and tells him that I have just tripped on the road, and she noticed gravel in the wound. She would like the doctor to look at it as soon as possible. The doctor tells her that he should be able to look at it as soon as we can get there. My mom then rushes me into the car (still crying), and proceeds to drive me the 30+ minutes to the doctor's office. We are taken into the back almost as soon as we arrive. I have since mostly stopped crying, and am down to just having tears in my eyes. The doctor walks into the room, and undoes the dressing. He exchanges some quiet words with my mom, she nods, and he immediately goes to work. The first thing he does is get a relatively small, but stiff, brush out, puts some kind of bright yellow antibiotic (or soap) on the brush, and starts scrubbing the gravel and cinders out. How long all this takes, I cannot remember, because it was such an excruciating experience. After he is done getting out all of the gravel, he puts on a clean dressing, and gives my mom some instructions on how often to change it, etc. He then hands her a few suckers to give to me at a later time, and gives me one for now. Since I am once again crying, I do not open it right away, but instead do so on the way home. After making it home, I am confined to the house, so I don't go tearing the bandage off, for the rest of the day, and my mom goes about cleaning the spots of blood I had dripped across the house as I ran through. After my wound had healed, I was made to wash the dishes after every meal for one month, for dripping blood across the house, but it was only enforced for a week since it was a rare occasion that it was probably best I tracked the blood across the house.
Now I shall relate the newer of the two stories, this one having occurred a scant two months ago:
One day, after work, I decided that it would be a great day for a bike ride. My friend Thomas and I made plans to meet, and set a route of about 15 miles. Once we got started, it was pretty clear that my friend Thomas was a much faster rider than me, but he often stopped and waited for me, and occasionally rode behind me. The planned route involved quite a few right turns, to save having to cross traffic to get where we wanted to go. It was a loop route, which would leave us at about 7 miles away from my place at the farthest. At this point there was a right turn, and it was one of the rare times I was in the lead. I signaled for the right turn as I was slowing down, and accidentally squeezed the brake too hard. I locked up the tire, and the front wheel cut on me. I fell to my left onto a road that had just been ground down to be resurfaced. I was not wearing any gloves, so my palm was quite torn up, and I also scraped my left arm, and left leg. The leg injury was minor scrapes, but the arm was more serious. I got up, happy that there was no traffic behind us when I spilled into the roadway, and started to feel myself out for the injuries, to see if I was well enough to ride back. I decided to do so, and rode back to my place, where Thomas helped me put my bike away, and made sure that I got the wounds basically cleaned up and that none were too serious.
Everything seemed to be relatively OK, so he went on his way back home, and I put on a makeshift bandage, since I was in no mood to go out and get real medical supplies. I used paper towels, triple antibiotic, and electrical tape to form a makeshift bandage until I was willing and able to go to the store to get proper supplies. Here is how the injury looked at about 4 hours after the incident:
After a couple weeks of proper bandages with regular redressing, the wounds had healed, and they currently appear as shown above.
Now it is your turn to either catch me in my web of lies, or to add your own touch to make me out to be more heroic.
Kneecap injury from story #1
Arm injury from story #2
Hand injury from story #2
Relatively fresh image of hand and arm for story #2
7 vote(s)
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posted by APR dreamlands on September 21st, 2010 12:27 AM
Reckless and exciting! A much better turn of events than the stupid and clumsy that was present before. I like it!
posted by relet 裁判長 on September 21st, 2010 7:44 AM
I identify the two bits Lincøln added as fabricated. Task completed? :D
If not, I suggest the following changes:
s/bike/raptor/g
s/pedals/beast's back/g
s/front wheel/reins/g
s/rear brake/flanks/g
1: " Said ditch was perhaps 2 feet deep with shallow sides gently sloping down to it. As I was running, I decided to see if I could jump diagonally across the gap from my mailbox out to the crosswalk. Mind you I could barely jump straight across it, I don't know why I decided to jump across diagonally. I guess I thought I was running so fast that I could make it. Well, surprise surprise, I didn't make it. I didn't really even come close, I landed near the bottom of the ditch on the upslope of the other side. I fell, the cap of my knee falling on one of the stones of pavement that made up the very rough, crumbling edge of the road. "
2: "At this point there was a right turn, and it was one of the rare times I was in the lead. I saw that the road was under construction and was all torn up, and was basically just loose gravel, and I decided to see if I could do a fishtail in the loose gravel, I sped up to get going as fast as I could, standing up on the pedals, and when I got to the corner I turned the front wheel hard to the right and slammed on the rear brake. I fishtailed alright. I actually fishtailed all the way around. I did a complete 360° (which I wasn't expecting), and when I came back around I had too much momentum and I fell to my left onto a road that had just been ground down to be resurfaced."