I don't remember much. I definately fell, and I definately didn't get back up. There was a loud pop followed by a crunch. I felt my muscles snap away from my patella and spring back into place. I remember the ceiling. I remember the face of my teamate Ryan looking quite shocked. I remember staring at my leg. I remember thinking "gee that was connected a minute ago" followed by "wow my knee probably doesn't belong all the way over there".

   So I did what anyone else would have done.

   I screamed like Winnie the Pooh in a blender.

   I yelled for the school trainer. He has a medical degree, he'll fix it right? Well he definately tried.

   "Is it going back in?" he asked me as I twisted in raw agony. Apparently he was trying to force the kneecap back into place. If anyone honestly expected me to answer with anything other than "AAAAHHHHHHH!" then I hope that their ice cubes melt before they can get them into a glass. "Shoot this sucker's tough". There are good times and bad times to have an obstinate knee. Oh if it was only so stubborn before it came out.

   Finally the trainer said, "Call 911". I had stopped screaming at this point. It was doing me no good. My principal had come in and joined my coach and a few of my teamates in the ever-so-helpful circle of blank staring. He asked for my mom's phone number and I screwed it up like twelve times before he just went and got the directory. It's a good thing the paramedics took half an hour to get into the gym or else he might not have had time to think that out.

   "Coach . . ." I said weakly.

   "Yes?" he replied.

   "I might not be at practice tomorrow"

   "I don't want to meet the man who would be"

That kind of philosophical crap is tough to sort out when your leg is being held together by the sheer power of God.

   The paramedics showed up. There's a kid in my grade who is legally allowed to serve as a paramedic. It's funny to think that my ambulatory future could easily have been in his hands.

   "Ok we need to ask you some questions before we do anything" the male technician said to me.

   "I do love trivia" I responded.

   "Ok first question."

   "I'm ready Regis" these guys don't get paid enough to put up with assholes like me.

   "Can you feel your knee?" he inquired.

This one was tough. I took a whole second and a half to contemplate the throbbing mass of writhing calcium deposit that was wedged next to my calf muscle, rending various veins and arteries in half and causing muscle spasms that directed my nervous system in a chaotic frenzy of torment and anguish.

   "Knee . . . knee . . . hmmmmm . . . that's what, under my waist? Oh yes I do feel it"

   "Does it hurt?"

Oh goody. One of these people.

   "It's kind of like putting my leg in a shredder"

   "Ok I'm going to flash this little light in your eye. Ok?"

   "Go for it"

Flash. Bright light.

   "Ok I think he's conscious"

Ooooh. He's good.

   "I need you to tell me your name" he asked me.

Bond. James Bond.

   "Josh"

   "And what did you have for lunch today"

The most vile and detestable crap ever assembled on a cafeteria tray.

   "I don't know. Probably a chicken sandwi . . . AAAAHHHH!" I screamed as my leg pulsed to the beat of my waning heart.

   "What's wrong?" my principal asked.

   "Well for starter's my leg isn't attatched to my body. Ah ah ah ah" I grunted carefully after my snide comment.

   "Ok this is important" The EMT stated. "Did you hurt anything else on the way down?"

I looked down at my leg, or what used to be my leg, rather. I looked back up at the moustached man before me.

   "Yeah I think I scraped my elbow, I'll need that looked at."

Coach started to laugh but the principal shot him the death glare.

   As I lay on my back looking up at the faces around me, I heard a familiar voice.

   "Ginobili" it said.

   "What?" I snapped back.

   "I guaruntee I'm the last person you want to see" he said with a wicked smile.

   "You and Mrs. Knight are tied. Oh by the way, I have a paper due tomorrow" I started to ask my principal.

   "You want me to explain why it will be late?" he asked.

   "No I need you to fire her so that it won't be in the back of my mind during all of this stress"

   "How about I get her to collect it Monday"

   "Deal"

So they hauled me off in a stretcher. It had wheels which of course led to the slamming of my decrepit body into the myriad of obstructions near the gym. The ambulance was cool. There was lots of stuff to look at. The fact that I could vivdly see the Grim Reaper in the shadows of the medical equipment kept me occupied.

   "Are we there yet?" I asked the EMT. Now it was his turn.

   "Yeah we passed the hospital awhile ago, we're just going to throw you in the river"

I would have laughed had my thoughts not been so entranced on my muscles trying to "catch" my kneecap and draw it back towards it's former location.

   "So what's the pain like?" the EMT asked.

   "Um, about the same as that one kid who licked an active toaster in a bathtub with his other arm under a running Sawzall"

   The hospital was great. First they dumped me violently onto a bed. They tried to bend my leg up and over the edge of the bed as opposed to holding my leg together and gently lifting the rest of me on. It was a good idea, except for the fact that my leg resembled a noodle in a wind tunnel and whenever it was touched it felt like a rapier protruding from my leg. A nurse walked in and asked me how I injured my leg and what not. She then asked me the most idiotic question ever.

   "On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you feel?"

 

 

 

Really? Can you ask anything more retarded? There's no such thing as a stupid question, but evidentally there is such thing as a moronic nurse.

   "Like how much pain am I feeling?"

   "Yes, exactly."

   "A lot."

   "So like what number?"

   "I've never done this to myself so I guess it's a ten, although to other people it might only be a seven. So do you want what I think it should be or do you want me to try to somehow encompass the common expectation of how much pain I should be feeling?"

That's what I wanted to say. It actually came out more like:

   "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

   "I need a number here" she said, tapping her foot.

I need my kneecap reattatched to my body but apparently the number game is a much higher prioroty.

   "Sixty"

   "One to ten" she demanded.

   "Look if you're going to doubt my number than write down whatever you want!"

At this point my mom walked in. I was half expecting a hug and tears of grief and half expecting her to slap me in the head. She was surprisingly void of emotion. That made one of us.

   The nurse walked out and returned with an IV. I had just had a bad experience with blood being taken a day earlier so I was jubilant at the sight of another needle.

   "Ok this might hurt" she said as she stabbed a needle through my arm. Most people would count to three or try to distract me but she made sure I had the pleasure of watching a sharp point be drilled into my wrist. Luckily the recent obliteration of my patella joint had the pain department of my brain working too hard to notice.

   "The doctor will be in shortly. Are you feeling any better? What's your out-of-ten now?"

   "Well let me think. It's a one! I'm healed! Somebody immortalize this woman as a Saint! Oh thank you Jesus for blessing me with the grace of this angel!!!!"

Actually I said something like:

   "It's a low eleven"

 

   Doctors and nurses have a different concept of time than everyone else. When people think of a minute, they generally think of a sixy second time lapse. Doctors apparently think the little red hand on the clock is break dancing while the minute hand sings Vanilla Ice and the hour hand just sits in the corner all passed out with a hangover. As I waited with my mother and the trainer, who was literally holding my leg together,  I overheard the patient next door give a list of symptoms she was experiencing. At first I thought she was just reading the side effects of a bottle of Viagra a little bit too loudly but it soon came to me amidst all of my excruciating pain that she was suffering from an overdose of a classic case of "hanky panky".

That made me giggle. Giggling made my leg hurt. Someone having sex hurt my leg.

    The nurse brought more and more bags and clipped them to the IV. I had so many drugs pumping through my body that I could have had a role on Sesame Street.

It was explained to me that my body wasn't accepting the medication like it should be. This is evidentally common in people with high metabolisms. My metabolism is pretty high. One time I walked into a pizza buffet and pooped myself before I sat down at the table.

   Finally the doctor came in. He assessed the situation and began working.

   "Ah. I see that you've dislocated your kneecap"

Nuh uh! Get out of here! Really?

   "Is that so?"

   "It's one of the most painful events to be experienced"

   "I believe it" I said.

   "In fact only pregnancy and a dislocation of the shoulder rate higher in pain level"

If the nurse's annoying questions are part of some ongoing study I might have to get a lawsuit started.

   "We're going to have to force it back in"

They don't say that to pregnant women a lot.

   "What was that?" he asked me.

I guess I'm a loud thinker.

   "I guess you are"

   He pushed and he pushed and he pulled and he pulled. That knee was not going to move. I experienced no pain during this process. I was awake and aware of what was going on, but I do not remember the pain. Evidentally they have a drug that infests your brain and takes away your memory of pain. I feel like Kianu Reeves when I try to recall that moment. I also feel like Kianu Reeves when I spill toothpaste on myself.

   Although I do not remember the pain of the moment, I can vividly recall the "nurse" trying to get me to sleep through the relocation process.

   "Just try to go to sleep honey"

Asking me to go to sleep that day would be like asking Richard Simmons to have sex with a woman.

   I did manage to doze off eventually and i remember the medication having a very funny effect on my dreams. i had the "running through the happy meadow" dream, which i thought was only achieved by smelling those sniffy markers once too many times. I was suddenly awaken from my minor coma by the words:

   "On a scale of one to ten . . ."

 

What kind of (heavy profanity)ing hospital was this? Can they honestly not just ask:

   "Hey how's your leg?"

 

 

So eventually I got back home. I was still under the influence of medication. I soon found out that the medicine had the power to enhance my emotions to an uncontollable amount. It was disgusting. I was like a pregnant woman for eight hours. My girlfriend came to see me and I cried because I was so happy. When she left I cried because I was so forlorn.  I dropped a tissue and ripped the box in half and started clawing at my face in rage. My parents tried to comfort me and I beat my chest and howled in anguish.

   Why would people honestly want to be on drugs?

 

I called my Dad eventually. He made me feel better. See when he was a kid, he had to have both of his knees operated on. It's nice to know that I was destined to decommission myself at some point.

 

All in all it was a very entertaining experience. I kind of wish I could have had the attutude about it then that I do now. I know my stories rarely have morals (if i even finish them) but i think we can all learn something from my experience.

 

as you all go through your lives know that random shit (excuse my sailor talk) is going to happen and there's nothing you can do about it. try to have a sense of humor about it. if i wasn't able to by sarcastic and cynical all day long then i guaruntee that i'd still be on crutches. i'm not saying anyone has to be one of those annoying optimists who could probably smile through a lynching. i'm just saying that as your getting lynched, at least make fun of your assailent's combover and call his mother a prostitute a couple of times, you know, just to give him a reason.

 

peace