Garoo

That’s the sound the top of my skull made, last night, when it encountered the icy ground at a speed a little bit too high for my taste. No Schplof!, no Creek!, just Oh shit! and, although it makes for a less spectacular story, I guess I shouldn’t complain. Less spectacular also means less dangerous, usually.

When snow melts and then it gets cold again, did you know it becomes ice? Did you know it gets slippery where accumulated snow hasn’t been wiped out? Did you know it could make you fall back, breaking your skull, getting into a coma and meeting God? Oh yeah, you knew? Well, I didn’t: I live in Paris, and we don’t get this kind of thing. Especially in my room, which I didn’t leave that much for the past years. No snow, no ice, just old mouldy breadcrumbs just that close to becoming sentient and writing philosophical treaties. But I digress. So, boom, I fell, ass to the ground, shoulder to the ground, skull to the ground, in that order—not a real backflip this time, I should get some more training.

Despite the lack of coma and near-death experience, it’s still the first time I knock my head this way, from all my height. Well, almost all my height: consdering how my left hand feels, I must have had enough time to soften the fall a little. Just enough not to kill myself (can one actually kill themselves by falling this way?). Fortunately my hand is not messed up enough to prevent me from typing—what would become of me if I couldn’t write? But still, the knocking, that feels weird. It’s the kind of thing that usually sends you into E.R., with Abby Lockhart disinfecting your scalp after she’s counted the reflections of her lamp in your pupils and discussed her love life with the rookie of the year (oh, by the way, I missed the rerun of the E.R. pilot this afternoon, I had forgotten, damn—but I wouldn’t have rushed home just for that anyway). I don’t want to over-dramatize there, but… oh yes, I do actually, why wouldn’t I, when something happens to me, for once? So, do you realize that, for the tenth of a second, as I felt my skull hit the ground, I wondered if I was going to pass out and die here, stupidly freezing to death, lying unconscious on the icy tarmac, never knowing if I would have turned out to be a good Président de la République? Can you imagine?

Well, I didn’t even see my whole life in flashbacks. No, not a single one actually.

Probably that it would have been boring. Like Spike said last Saturday: cuppa tea, cuppea tea, almost got shagged, cuppa tea. Well, since I’m not Giles and I don’t drink tea, you’d have to replace it with Pepsi, but the idea remains.

So there, for the first time in my life I hit my head, I’ve lost at least three milliliters of blood and I had to get disinfected, but not by Abby. Though I didn’t lose in the bargain: my student doctor has shorter hair, but he’s male, and he exists in real life (unlike the men in E.R., which I don’t fancy that much and, besides, who probably couldn’t use Derma-spray in real life). So, well, it’s alright. And all is fine now. I’ll live.