The Game of One-Upmanship

Yeah, go ahead and say it.  I'm a hypocrite.   After this past week's events, being called that is nothing less than I deserve.

You're probably wondering what this spate of self-deprecation is all about, right?  It's about my lapse in good judgment and my utter abandonment of common sense.   On Thursday, I proved once and for all that I'm an idiot.   As I'm sure you remember, a while back I practically preached a sermon about being careful and responsible, about how I don't let Pax and Skyla do stuff that I think is dangerous, and about how I always try to think twice before doing something reckless myself.  You recall that?  Well, you're doing better than me because, apparently, I forgot it in my need to prove that anything my twin brother can do, I can do better.

How's this for evidence that I need to be protected from myself?

Yeah...broken wrist.  And before you ask, yes, it hurts.  It hurts a lot.

I'll be wearing this cast for at least a month, and I'll probably need physical therapy after that.   It's my left arm, too.  In case you didn't know, I'm left-handed, so this means I can't feed myself properly,  and I can't brush my teeth or comb my hair with any degree of skill.    Ever try doing that stuff with the wrong hand?  It's stupidly difficult.  Getting dressed by myself is a manageable challenge; however, shaving is entirely out of the question.  Michael has volunteered to help me shave, but I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of my brother shaving me.   Possibly being shaved by Michael isn't even the worst part.  The worst part is that I have to hold my cane in the wrong hand as well.   I can't even begin to describe how awkward that is.  It's more crippling than having a broken arm.

Oh...and just in case you're wondering, I'm not typing this.  My awesome cousin Dylan installed some kind of voice-recognition software on my laptop so that I can just tell the computer what I want to say and it'll write it for me.  I'd like to think he did it for altruistic reasons, but it was more than likely to prevent me from pestering everyone to help me do stuff on the computer.   Whatever the reason, though, I'm grateful.

The doctor said I'm supposed to rest as much as possible for the next few days, and Sapphire somehow interpreted that to mean I should stay in bed.   The painkillers upset my stomach and they make me feel pretty much out of it, so maybe staying in bed isn't such a bad idea, but when I'm awake and alert, I need something to do.   Since I can't play the guitar or the piano and I can only read with one hand, audiobooks, iTunes and the internet on my laptop are keeping me occupied. 

I needed surgery to set my wrist.   Did I mention that I don't like hospitals?  Having to spend the weekend in the hospital didn't thrill me much. let me tell you.  I wasn't allowed to eat for nearly eighteen hours before they were finally able to operate on my arm, and then when I came out of surgery I was too sick to eat.  When I finally did get some food it was utterly disgusting.   I was in a room with two old guys who kept asking me personal questions.  When one of them ventured to ask me how I broke my arm.  I told him I did it playing extreme sports.   I'm pretty sure neither one of them realized I'm blind, because they seemed to buy that explanation.  One of them even muttered something like, "Young boys these days...no sense of responsibility!"   I can just imagine what he would've said if he knew what really happened.

Anyway, I was discharged from the hospital this morning.   The surgeon wrote me a note for my boss and put me off work for the next ten days, which means there won't be a pay cheque coming in.  That sucks, especially since I just started back on full-time hours.

The last couple of days haven't been a great time in my life.  My only consolation, ironically enough, is that Sini isn't here right now.  If she were, she'd probably be furious with me for being so irresponsible, and then my life would really be complicated.

So, now you want to know the truth about how it happened, don't you?  I guess I'd better start at the beginning, which was Thursday afternoon, when my brother declared that he was bored.   For me, even if there's nothing to do there's usually something to think about, but I'm a creative person and I can entertain myself pretty well.   Michael gets bored easily.

I happened to be bored too, because there really wasn't much going on around the house, and the only thing I could think about was how much I missed Sini.   I didn't even have Skyla and Pax around to keep me busy.  Rommie and Dylan decided to take all the kids to the library, so   Michael and I were just hanging out in the back yard.

When I told Michael I was also bored, he suggested that we should try to think of something to do.  When he says that, he usually means that he wants me to think of something for us to do.

"If I could think of something to do, don't you think I'd already be doing it?" I said.

"Not if it was a thing that required two people," Michael said.  "Come on.  Let's brainstorm."

"With you, it's not so much a brainstorm as a brainshower."

"Shut up."

"I can't shut up and brainstorm at the same time, dimwit."

"Okay, fine," Michael grumbled.  "Smartass."

"Better a smartass than a dumbass," I said, and earned myself a solid punch in the shoulder from my twin.
 
We tossed out suggestions for a while, but none of them seem worth doing. At last I said,"We could have a climbing contest."

I have no clue what made me think of that.   I love to climb and so does Michael but, in retrospect, the notion of two twenty-three year old men having a climbing contest is so juvenile that it's embarrassing.   Of course, it seemed like a good idea to me at the time.

Michael didn't seem keen on it, and said it was lame, but the idea that he disliked it only made me like it more.  A little cajoling from me eventually got him into the spirit of the thing.  We started with something relatively easy.  I went first.

"Come on," I said.  "Give me your hand.  If you can't make it up here on your own, I'll help you."

"I don't need your help," Michael said. "I can do it just fine."

"Okay, prove it," I said.

Michael can never resist a challenge.  "Here, take your cane," he said.  "I'll be up there in two seconds."

I'm not sure why he thought I'd need my cane just then.  I certainly wouldn't want to try to carry it while climbing, and I could rely on Michael to make sure I didn't trip on anything in the yard, but I took it anyway.   Michael joined me several seconds later.

While we were trying to figure out what else to climb, Michael decided to try his hand at some acrobatic maneuvers.  I realized he was hanging upside down from the edge of the deck when I heard his voice coming from somewhere below my dangling feet.

"Do this if you can!"  

"Big deal," I said. "I can do that, no problem."

At that point, we declared the contest to be tied at two points apiece, and climbed back onto the deck.

"So, what's next?" I said.

"I'm going to climb to the top of the fence between our yard and the neighbour's place," Michael decided. "I'll let you know when I get to the top."

"Okay."

Michael knows I'm a great judge of distance, so there was no way he could cheat.  Sure enough, when he got to the top of the fence, he called out to me.  I could tell from the sound of his voice that he was up pretty high.

"Top that!" Michael shouted.

So, I did.  I climbed onto the roof of the garden shed. 

Michael climbed a tree.

I climbed the same tree, and that was the beginning of my undoing.

"Make room for me," I said.  "I'm coming up."

Now, it's not as if Michael and I have never climbed the same tree before.  As a matter of fact, we've both climbed this particular tree, and we've even both climbed it at the same time.   The new part of the experience on Thursday was for both of us to risk being on the same branch at the same time.   Much to our relief, we found that it's sturdy enough to support our combined weight. 

Once I was up there and knew how strong the branch was, I had an idea.  If I could hang upside down by my knees from the edge of the deck, I could do it on the branch as well.  The advantage of not being able to see how far I am from the ground is that I'm not afraid of heights and I don't get that sensation of vertigo some people say they experience when they're upside down.   Michael might have the courage to hang by his knees from the deck, I thought, but he'd never hang from a tree branch.   Full points to me in the game of one-upmanship?  Hell yeah.

I went out farther on the branch and swung down so that I was hanging by my knees.   It was less difficult than I'd expected, and I was rather proud of myself.  

Apparently feeling confident in my ability to defy the laws of physics, my obviously testosterone-flooded brain told me that if it was cool to hang by both knees, it'd be super cool to try hanging by just one.

I don't need to tell you that was the worst possible stunt I could've pulled.  Guys, let me just state for the record that machismo isn't always a good thing.  Pride goeth before a fall, and all that.

And if you want to know what it feels like to fall head-first from at least five times your own height, it's damned scary.  You know how they say when a person thinks he's about to die, his whole life flashes before his eyes?  It really does, even if the person is blind.   My mind's eye give me a speeded-up recap of my life -  all twenty-three short years of it - and I wished with all my might that I'd done something in those twenty-three years that people would remember me for in a positive way.  Instead, they were going to be saying stuff like, "Poor, dumb Tyler Brightman...I remember him.  He died falling out of a tree."

And then I hit the ground.

And I wasn't dead.

Fast on the heels of that revelation, my body registered pain.  I let out a yell that the neighbours all over the block probably heard. 

From far above me, Michael was hollering frantically, "Tyler!  Are you dead?  Don't move!  I'm coming right down!"

"I'm...not dead," I somehow managed to say, but I'm pretty certain Michael didn't hear me.

 

 Michael must have scrambled down the tree in record time because he was at my side in seconds.  Judging by his voice, he was nearly crying as he asked me over and over if I was okay.   Miraculously, I hadn't hit my head and, aside from having the wind knocked out of me, everything except my left arm seemed fine.  When I assured Michael that I could move everything except my left arm, he calmed down a little.  He helped me sit up against the trunk of the tree.  

"What should we do?" he said.  

I think I was too stunned and in too much pain to show any incredulity at him asking me what we should do.  I was the one who'd just fallen a good ten meters from a tree and busted my arm.  I should've been asking him what to do

"We need help, Michael," I said.

 

"You know, Sapphire's going to kill you," Michael said, rather unhelpfully.

"Who's home?" I asked, and realized with horror that my voice trembled when I spoke.   I was literally shaking all over, and the pain in my arm was so bad that I thought I was going to pass out from it, so I guess I shouldn't have been shocked that my voice was less than steady.  "Besides us, I mean."

"Xander," Michael said.  "Beau and Hunter, I think."

"Get Beau," I said.

"Why?"

"Because I don't know if I can get up, and I'm pretty sure you can't lift me by yourself."

"I thought you said you just hurt your arm."

"I did, but it...it's really bad.  If I try to get up, I might fall down again."

'Okay," Michael said.  "I'll get Beau, but...I can't just leave you here, can I?"

"If you can't leave me, how are you going to get Beau?   Just hurry, okay?"

"Okay," he said.

"Go."

I heard him running across the yard, already yelling for Beau to come out of the house.  A few minutes later, the back door slammed and then two sets of footfalls were coming back toward me.

Michael practically threw himself onto the grass beside me and grabbed me by my non-injured hand.  He sounded like he was gasping for air as he demanded, "Tyler, are you still okay?"

"Other than the obvious, yeah," I said.

I sensed Beau kneeling or sitting at my other side.   Fortunately, Beau is calm under pressure.  He said, "Tyler, can you move your fingers?"

"A little, but it hurts," I told him. 

"Can you move your elbow?"

"Yeah."

He was silent for a while, which was evidently too much for Michael to bear.  My brother said, "Well? Why are you staring at his arm like that?"

"I hate to tell y'all, but that arm's broken," Beau said.  "I can tell just by lookin' at it."

"I think I felt it snap," I said.

"You would," said Beau.  "I broke my wrist once.  Got thrown by this crazy mare my uncle warned me not to ride.  I felt my wrist snap.  Might've heard it too, though that could've been my imagination."

At the mention of horses, I couldn't suppress a groan of frustration.  "Oh...Guardian.  How am I supposed to look after him with a broken arm?"

"Don't you worry about that," Beau said.  "Me and Michael can handle it."

"Hey!" Michael exclaimed.

"Army volunteer," Beau said.  He gave my knee a brotherly pat. "Come on.  Let's see if we can get you up and into the house.  You're gonna need a doctor for sure, but we gotta put some ice on your arm right away, and we'd better call Sapphire."

"Do we have to call Sapphire?" I said.  "Can't you guys just take me to the ER?"

"She's gonna find out eventually, y'know," Beau said.

"I know, but can't she find out about it after I get it taken care of?"

I guess they didn't want to argue with me, because nobody called Sapphire.  I know, that was beyond irresponsible of us, but we were having an irresponsible kind of day.

Beau decided that he'd go with me to the hospital and that Michael should stay home and wait for Rommie, Dylan and the kids to get back from the library and for Sapphire to come home from wherever she was.  This, of course, effectively left it up to Michael to explain to everyone what had happened to me.  

Beau and I waited in the hospital's emergency department for what seemed like several hours before my number was called and a nurse came to escort me to a room where my arm could be X-rayed.    After the X-ray, the nurse directed us to another room where we were supposed to wait for the doctor.

The doctor was grim when he delivered the news that both bones in my forearm were broken and that I'd need surgery to fix them.  Long story short, he admitted me to the hospital then and there, and I was informed that I'd be put on a list for surgery.

Once I was settled in my room, I told Beau that he might as well go home.   Someone needed to update everybody about what was going on.   Beau hadn't even been gone half an hour before Sapphire showed up.   She did not, as Michael predicted, threaten to kill me.  I kind of wished that she had done, though.  The way she fussed over me was far worse than any scolding could have been.

Of course, the scolding will doubtless be forthcoming, once I'm feeling better.

Anyway, now that I'm back at home, I hope things will soon settle into a routine that passes for normal.   When I first got home, Skyla seemed confused about why I'd been gone and why I can't play with her and carry her around like I did before.  I think she was a little scared of my cast at first, but now she's over it and seems to understand that it means I can't do everything I used to.   Fortunately, everyone's great about helping to look after Skyla and Pax. 

This is usually the point at which I tell you all about the lesson I've learned from my experience.  Maybe an appropriate moral to this story would be, don't do dumb stunts that might get you killed.  Or maybe it should be, if you're going to do dumb stunts that could get you killed, be prepared for the consequences if you don't actually kill yourself.   Yeah...I don't know.   I'm sure there is a valid lesson in all this, and when I decipher what it is, I'll fill you in.

This has turned into a longer post than I'd anticipated.  I'm getting tired, so I think I'll stop for now.

Oh...wait.  Just one more thing.   There is a silver lining.   Because I'm 'convalescing' - doesn't that make me sound like I'm recovering from some deadly illness? - I'm allowed to have all the treats I want, and I'm allowed to eat them in bed.

 

Catch you guys later!