The Summer I Almost Died, by J. L. Guyer

The summer after my sophomore year at university could have been my last. It certainly seemed that way to my parents who dreaded the next phone call they would receive from their youngest daughter or worse one of her roommates. The joke was that “no news was good news.”

I was living off campus for the summer with a couple of girlfriends and was able to resume my job from the previous summer at Rockhouse Playschool. Every day I had to ride my bike up Milton. You know that left turn off of Milton just after going under the railroad tracks? Yeah, that was my demise. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The first sign that I wasn’t immortal happened about a week after school ended. It was a simple thing, really. You should know that I’m a klutz, have been my whole life. So, when I say simple, I mean, it was simple for me. I don’t remember where I was headed, but I was on my two-wheeled mode of transportation. And, yes. I saw the mailboxes. They were the ones who refused to move out of the way.

My first injury that summer in Flagstaff, Arizona was a small, inconsequential finger wound from being sandwiched between the handle bars of my bike and the large blue public mailbox. The second injury, I admit, was totally my fault.

You see, I was babysitting. I know, that’s like the worst. Not only was I babysitting, I was doing it as a favor for a friend who normally did the babysitting. And it was the first and last time I met the 9 year old girl I babysat that night. I don’t remember her name. I sure hope she doesn’t remember mine.

The beginning of the night was smooth sailing. We ate dinner and played games and were just getting ready for bed when I had the brilliant idea that lead to my next injury.

“Let’s go watch the sunset,” I said.

She liked the idea. So, we did. We went out on the balcony and watched the sky turn orange and pink and red as the sun disappeared below the tops of the pines. Scattered clouds reflecting the light made the sunset one of the best I’ve seen.

Once the sun was gone and the darkness was settling across the forest, we turned to go back inside. Locked. Okay. Breathe. The door was locked.

Any ideas how we got back inside?

There were several hours yet before my friend was going to relieve me from babysitting. And it was getting colder by the minute. I didn’t have a cellphone. It was all up to me to figure it out.

I peered over the wooden railing to see if there was any way down. A short chain-linked fence stood on the ground below us but still too far for me to reach safely. There didn’t seem to be any handholds on the walls of the house, either. But there was a flood light . . . I didn’t stop to consider that it might not hold my 125 pound body. I climbed over the railing, confident that I was going to find a way to unlock that door so she could get into the house, go to bed, and pretend like nothing ever happened.

Holding on to the splintered wood, I slowly placed my foot down on the light fixture. Then, the other foot. That’s when it broke away from the wall. I slid down the railing till I was holding onto the base of the balcony by my fingertips. (The ones that I had previously injured.) I fell. I didn’t feel any pain during chaos. I got up and brushed myself off before heading into the house through the back door.

After saving the girl from the balcony, I was more worried about how I was going to pay for the light I broke than the damage I’d done to my body. But she showed me where the first aid kit was and helped me clean my wounds. Both arms and hands were scraped up pretty bad, with splinters and chunks of dirt and rock in them. Blood dripped down them. I called my friend, the one who was supposed to be babysitting in the first place. She came to the rescue. It took nearly a month before my arms were back to normal, minus the addition of my new scars.

But that wasn’t the worst thing that happened to me that summer. Remember that left hand turn on Milton? I was riding my bike to work one day, my arms still not completely healed. I was terrified of sharing the road with the heavy traffic. I really should have gone all the way to Humphreys to turn. But I didn’t. I crossed to the left side of the street at Milton and Rt. 66, to ride on the sidewalk and avoid that turn past the tunnel. I should have gotten off my bike and walked it across the side street that ended on Milton. But I didn’t.

Just as I arrived at the Dairy Queen on the corner, a truck pulled up and stopped. I kept going. He didn’t look to his right. He was busy watching the traffic on his left. That’s when his truck hit my bike. I want to say that I flew off my bike, but that’s inaccurate. I really just toppled over and was trapped underneath. If he had been going any faster, I would have received more than just a few cracked ribs and an injury to my knee. I declined a ride to the hospital in the ambulance and opted to hobble the rest of the way to work.

You might think, what else could happen? That summer, I crashed into a mailbox, fell off a balcony and got hit by a car.  Really, only minor injuries and almost accidents attacked me the rest of the summer.

Two days after the car incident, I flew to the Ukraine. I was going with a church group to teach English. My teammates did their best to make me laugh whenever they could. They thought it was funny that my cracked ribs made it painful for me to laugh. They redeemed themselves on a windy day, when they pulled me out of the path of a falling table umbrella. It was most definitely trying to kill me.