A Joyride, Free of Charge
When I was growing up, I learned through trial and error that six words, one small white lie, would make life easier for me.
I want to be a doctor.
In those days — and even today, as a young adult — telling people what you really want to do leads to way too many follow up questions.
So I told my lie at family gatherings to avoid probing questions.
I told it at Church, to sidestep the congregation.
I said it so much, that I started to believe it. If I’m not mistaken, I put it as my future occupation in my middle school yearbook.
In actuality, I wanted to be a professional basketball player.
Because the truth is, seeing large amounts of blood makes my stomach turn. The scent of hospital halls makes me nauseous. So it was poetic justice that I ended up in the emergency room because of basketball.
Maybe the universe sensed my dishonesty about my future profession and taught me a lesson with a blow to the abdomen.
My lies stopped.
They ceased at the same time my fellow basketball camp attendees knee hit my stomach, like a hurried driver plowing into a car at an intersection. I got into a car crash on hardwood floors.
Yes, you read that last line properly.
Because when you’re young, you treat your body like a vehicle. A shiny red new car that’s sole purpose is for pushing the limits, not staying inside of them.
But in basketball, they don’t call it a car crash, they call it taking a charge. You intentionally jump in front of your opponent when they’re dribbling towards the basket. Being young, you can’t predict or measure the severity of your crashes. Human skin doesn’t bend like a steel chassis.
And so, being an unlicensed driver, you press the gas a little harder than you’re supposed to. You run in the halls and bump into grownups without apologizing. You scrape your knee and don’t worry about covering the injury. You play fight, blind to the fact that those bumps and bruises will tell your story as an adult. Unaware that future lovers and children will read the scratches and nicks on your coat of paint, like Braille, to learn more about you.
My scratch was internal. The charge that I took at basketball camp, left me on the floor wincing in pain. Curled up like a rolly polly bug.
A whistle sounded by the referee. A foul was called. But I wasn’t sure if it was called on me or the kid that ran me over. I no longer cared. The only thing I could hear was my brain telling me how much pain I was in.
My camp counselor — who was a few years younger than I am at the time that I write this — came over to me on the floor. Thinking it was a minor bruise, he had the bright idea to grip my abdomen on both sides and massage my stomach with his thumbs. Sort of like he was trying to enter a cheat code on a video game controller, in hopes that I would pop up off of the floor like Mario and keep playing the game.
Adults always make things worse. His cheat code didn’t work.
My teammates helped me to the bench. I sensed they were more disappointed I couldn’t continue playing than they were worried about my health. We only had one other player on my team, who ended up taking my place in the game. After my teammate subbed in for me, I had plenty of room to lie down on the ice-cold metal bench on the sideline, to take my focus off of what had just happened. But the gyms ambient noise seemed to reverberate through the floor and into the bench, and amplify my pain.
I got up at the next time out, and could barely stand up straight.
Did I go back into the game? You bet.
Because, you see, my camp counselor was unqualified for what I experienced. I was unqualified to watch out for my own body. It was a match made in heaven.
At lunch, I couldn’t eat. I asked my brother to get me a soda instead. Typical. I drank some, and I threw up in a nearby garbage can.
My Dad came to camp about15 minutes later and took me to the hospital, he sensed something was wrong.
After an MRI and a bunch of other tests, I was diagnosed with a lacerated kidney. Apparently, my kidney is located towards the front of my stomach, instead of at my back. It was a freak accident. An accident that had me laying in the ICU for five days. Waiting. Lying in a hospital bed, anticipating my release from an environment that I felt uncomfortable in, like a tea bag steeping in water that was boiled slightly too long.
My injury, prematurely made me aware of my own mortality. It was the end of my life as I knew it. Apparently, my chassis could bend.
My Mom made sure I remembered that. After I was cleared to play contact sports, she peppered me with questions every time I got home.
“Did you wear your guard today?” She would ask.
I tried to reason with her that the stomach guard we bought wouldn’t help. I wasn’t being defiant, intentionally, it was just that the guard that we bought didn’t have pads anywhere near where my injury had occurred. The guards that did, got so bulky and uncomfortable when they got soaked with sweat, I couldn’t move freely and I would take it off. Eventually, we compromised.
When I returned to the court, I had a surreal awareness that one wrong hit could put me out of the game; and because internal injuries are serious things, could it take me out of the game of life?
Maybe.
But I couldn’t control what everyone else did while playing basketball. You can only drive one car at a time and hope that those sharing the road with you are paying attention.
And so, like a preschooler, falling from a jungle gym, and scanning his body, realizing he doesn’t have one scratch from the fall, I was emboldened by my return to the court.
Having a serious injury and returning to the floor, encouraged me to be more reckless. Dive for more loose balls. Take more charges, this time, with awareness of how I could protect myself properly. I felt strengthened, not weakened by my accident. Because I’m the kid who got into a car crash on hardwood floors and survived.
