I walked with purpose and poise down the street, though I was careful not to slip. I had tread many streets and sidewalks during snowstorms with thick newly-frozen ice before, and even though I held a book in my right hand and read it as I walked through what was quickly becoming the first blizzard of winter, I kept traction, and most importantly upright, the entire time.
Two things concerned me, two things I was working furiously to accomplish. I had my head buried in a hardbound covered copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, furiously finishing the American classic; and though I am a Twain fan, this was the first time I was reading it. I was engrossed by the surprise arrival of Tom Sawyer at the tail end of the book, curious as to what misadventure lurked, like that scene with Samuel Jackson after the credits in Iron Man.
My right hand was ice-cold, but I didn’t switch to my left, for it was precariously holding the cord to my iPhone’s headphones between its thumb and index finger. The cheap, Vietnamese-made headphone had cost only fifteen dollars; this was my tenth of this model. Through normal wear and tear and shoddy workmanship, I kept running through them; unwilling to replace them with a more-expensive, better quality headphone for I had recklessly destroyed that type as well. My fingers kept the frayed wire together, it had broken not twenty minutes previous, until I was able to fix them with electrical tape or buy another carbon copy of the aggravating piece of trash attached to my ears. I wouldn’t allow such a pebble in the shoe affect my day in any respect, due to my purpose for this jaunt into that fabulous weather.
The other thing on my mind was my destination, a going-away party for an artist friend of mine; flying freeing herself and fleeing the frigid frozen winters of the Washoe Valley. The frantic frenetic parties of hers were always a favorite of mine, and though I was shivering as I entered, her warmth and beauty warmed me up in mere moments. I placed my book and my iPhone in the bookbag I had been carrying, and went about my partying business. The party was fun, filled with many I knew, some I didn’t. I latched onto a friend or two, hopefully optimistic this party would be another success, but still I pondered the fate of Huck, Tom, and Jim, hoping I’d be able to finish the final three chapters before I went to bed that night. Once the party really got going, I found myself playing beer pong with a partner I had only met at such parties; a man I knew nothing about.
We were lined up against two pretty stoner girls at the table. We sunk four shots in a row, we were on fire, and the game had only begun. I introduced myself; he did the same. He said, “My name is Loren.”
I didn’t say anything, I merely nodded, it seemed right. The young man was six or seven years younger than I, and six or seven inches shorter as well. He wore a knee and leg brace, I knew instantly he had torn ligaments in his knee. Though he didn’t come up to my chin, I knew I wouldn’t be able to knock him down for he was stout and thick, completely muscle bound, cast notwithstanding. His free-flowing wavy locks and his penchant for bud smoking made me instantly conclude he was a snowboarder; a thesis on his injury formed in my head.
After we won the game against the pretty stoner girls who in commiseration of their defeat broke out Pop-Tarts, Loren and I cleaned the table up, re-racked the cups and waited for our next opponents, the host of the party and the artist of honor for the evening. During this downtime, I mentioned how I loved to walk and jog, especially during the type of weather upon us that evening.
“I don’t get to run much these days, though I will be able to do some water resistance exercises next month.” He had a gloom attach itself to his face, possibly coming inside from the storm, but it wasn’t because of the injury he looked so.
“Me neither,” I said. “I twisted my ankle a couple weeks ago and haven’t been able to run since.” I wasn’t learned about working out, physical therapy, or shredding the mountain, so I was lost, spewing out the only piece of information on working out I had at my disposal.
He laughed with a light contempt, as if I was trying to compare my sprain with his obvious injury. “Mine is a bit more serious than that. I shredded my ACL and my meniscus. I also tore my rotator cuff, though I didn’t get surgery for that.” He seemed almost proud of this fact, as if he had done something worthwhile in getting mangled.
“How the bloody hell did you do that?” I pictured in my head a game of chicken he lost against a car, for he seemed the type. Besides the bad right leg and the torn-up arm, Loren also sported a black eye where he was punched by a friend in order to have a legitimate excuse for getting out of work.
“On the slopes, I took a bit of a fall.” He stood and posed as he said this; I think he thought I was going to fall to his feet and be in awe of his terrible Jackass impression.
“Snowboarding?” I asked, cocksure of myself.
“Yep. You ride?” He asked me. I rolled my eyes just as he had done previously.
“Fuck no. I’m not an idiot.” I said it without considering it, a few glasses of beer from the previous game had loosened my tongue a bit.
“You calling me an idiot?” Loren was ready to fight. I could see the A Boy Named Sue mentality I had previously theorized was crystalizing right in front of me.
I hadn’t meant to offend, so I backed off as politically as I could. “What I mean to say is when I look for something fun to do, something exciting and exhilarating, I tend to look for activities which don’t involve the extreme possibility for physical harm. Gliding down a cold, hard mountain at fast speeds with little to no protection seems like a complete exercise in Darwinian principles.”
Talking a bit over his head cooled him down a little, as did our opponents who entered right afterward. We didn’t speak to each other as we ran to another rout of our competition. Again we re-racked, again we waited for another opponent; it was then we continued our conversation.
He seemed calm, it was the mixture of the beer from the game, the screwdriver he was also drinking, and the joint he was smoking. He said, “So you don’t like doing fun, exciting things like jumping out of airplanes and bungee jumping and snowboarding. What do you do that is so fun? How do you unwind and release?” He had thought long and hard throughout the game, I could tell.
“My favorite activities are writing and then reading. To me, those are fun activities, my ways to unwind and to release. Falling into a book, losing yourself into the world is just as engrossing to me as shredding is to you.”
“Are you a pussy? You don’t do it because you are afraid of getting hurt, right?” He didn’t quite buy my argument.
“No, it is just an added benefit. No one ever fucked up their knee by reading a book.” I gave him a smile and a wink.
“And tore a rotator cuff,” he added as our next competitors entered. We beat them too. In fact Loren and I ended the party undefeated champions four games later.
The party ended and I was sloshed, and if possible the streets of Reno were even worse. After leaving the house, I had to walk five blocks to the closest bus stop, hopefully catching the last bus to pass until the next morning. I scooted along, weary of the ice, not pulling out my book or iPhone to listen to more music knowing they would slow me down. I was one block away when I saw the bus pass; I hung my head low and looked at my moist, nearly frozen blocks of ice which had replaced my feet, resigned myself to the three mile walk in the weather which would feel like seven miles.
I pulled the book and the iPhone out of my bag and positioned them precisely where they had been, the book in my right hand, the iPhone in my left pocket with my two fingers holding the cord. If the cord wasn’t held, the left earpiece wouldn’t work, cutting out much of the best part of "Mountain Jam" by the Allman Brothers Band. I was only half-reading the book as I fidgeted with the player, and I wasn’t even concentrating on the ice and snow, which I had a sixth sense about walking in.
The pebble in the shoe was starting to get to me; the wire was acting stubbornly, I couldn’t get it in a perfect position to transmit the music to my ear, and coupled with the beer from seven successive victories of beer pong, my patience had worn out. Leaving the iPhone in my pocket, I grasped tightly with my left thumb and forefinger, yanking the headphones out of my ears and fully into my clutches in one fell swoop. I took my bookbag off my right shoulder, while still holding my book, still reading, still walking down the icy sidewalk, in order to put my headphones in the bookbag as to not let them frustrate me any further this evening.
The excessive multi-tasking was getting to me; I glanced over the one sentence in the book, and stopped to read it twice over. Wait a second Tom Sawyer, Jim is already free and you are going through with this silly charade, irking poor Huckleberry to no end in order to have another childish adventure. Didn’t you realize this was a coming-of-age story? Oh Tom Sawyer, how you piss me off! My anger boiled over, the ending of this book bothered me more than it should have, and I knew precisely on what to take it out.
With all the sound and fury I could muster, I threw the headphones into the street, not realizing the cord had wrapped itself around my forefinger and thumb in such a way to throw off my motion, leading to an awkward throw. The throw was further inhibited with the bookbag’s precarious position hanging from my left arm. I heard a large snap, at first I thought someone had fired an air rifle next to me; then I realized it was my rotator cuff ripping itself apart. Both of my arms dropped down, one in agony, one with sympathy pains. The hard, yet incredibly light book flew in a direct line into my right knee at such an angle as to hit both the front and the right side. I recoiled from the pain and toppled over, my perfectly tractioned feet staying put but my body collapsing from above.
I pulled as sensitively as possible my iPhone from its spot in my left pocket with my right hand and called 911. Later the doctor said during the fall I tore my ACL and my meniscus. He asked me how I did it. I said I did it snowboarding.
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