BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

(Continued from When Ladders Attack…)

Physics can be fun – if you can get past the arithmetic involved. I’ll admit that I had to look up the formula to calculate the number in the title because it has been 35+ years since I have been seated in a physics class and my career path took me places that really didn’t involve calculating the energy on impact of a falling object (namely me) on a regular basis. Therefore, yeah, formulas for such things were securely locked away on the dusty shelves of a long forgotten brain closet marked “Shit I Really Don’t Have A Need To Remember Anymore.”

So, 4369.44 Joules. Translated, that’s something on the order of 43 Kilowatts for about 1/10th of a second. That is how much energy was theoretically created by the force of my impact with the asphalt. But, I am getting ahead of myself. When last we left off the evil ladder had just pulled me backwards off the roof and I was about to die. Since I am still alive and writing this now I suppose I should back up and flesh out some of the other details.

Firstly, before anyone starts leaving weird comments, the St. Louis Ethical Society and their equipment are in no way at fault for any of this. Neither am I. It has literally been determined that this was the freakest of freak incidents. There was no reason for the ladder to kick out. It didn’t fail by way of a defect. It was solid as a rock. And I wasn’t being crazy and reckless. It was just one of those things that happened. In the grand scheme of things it was apparently on my schedule of life events – you know, that schedule they don’t tell you about that blindsides you when fate says, “Oh yeah, it’s time for Sellars to get fucked up for a while, and not in the good way.” So, anyway, the long and short is that I don’t want to see any comments from ambulance chasers or armchair lawyers who want to start screaming “lawsuit!” Nobody was at fault here. It was an accident, and as Elvis Costello says, “Accidents will happen…”

So, back to the 4369.44 Joules… Or, as noted, the fractions of a second prior to them.

It’s a very weird feeling when time slows down. I’ve written about it for Rowan Gant in several of my novels. That moment when something is happening and it seems that everything else in the world is moving at a normal pace and you are frozen in time… Or, maybe that you are at a normal pace and everything else around you has sped up. Who knows? All I can say is that experiencing it firsthand is disconcerting. It may also be why I am still here and writing these blog entries.

So… There I went, backwards off the roof, somewhere around 15 feet above the ground. My body was pitching in the direction it had been pulled and momentum was taking me into a head first trajectory and my first thought was literally, “Oh, FUCK!” Well, it was less a thought and more a verbal exclamation. In fact, I think it came out of my mouth more like, “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!”

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You hear the old saying about your life flashing before your eyes and such. Well, in my case my life DIDN’T flash before my eyes. What happened took place in what was probably a nanosecond, but hey, our brains are far more powerful computers than we realize. In my case, my brain went through the following sequence:

Surprise.

Panic.

Fear.

Acceptance of impending death.

Fuck that, I’m not ready to die just yet.

At this point I am going to date myself. Not like go out on a date. I mean I am going to say something that shows just how friggin’ ancient I am. There was a television series back in the early 70’s. It lasted all of one season and it was titled “The Delphi Bureau.” It revolved around  the adventures of government agent Glenn Garth Gregory and his photographic memory. Whenever he was in a situation – sometimes life threatening – which would call for some obscure information, you would see his thought processes visually represented on the screen. As in, you would see schematics or whatever flash on the screen as he would remember them and then use that info to form a course of action.

That is what happened to me.

I can’t for the life of me tell you exactly what all flashed through my head. What I remember were a series of lines, numbers, and outcomes superimposed on a still photo of myself falling off a roof. I know, weird, right? But, as weird as it may be I am not about to question it. All I can tell you is that this image of calculations and trajectories had a lot of red scribbling, which was immediately obvious as not the optimal outcome. There was one scribble of yellow, which, in my mind, appeared to be a survivable outcome. Unfortunately, there were no green.

I know, I know… The distance to the ground below allowed only for a fraction of a second of free fall, but like I said, our brains can compute way faster than we realize at times. My guess is that Adrenalin takes you from Pentium to Cray Supercomputer.

At any rate, I opted for the yellow scribbles and line because, as I noted earlier, I wasn’t ready to die just yet.

So… I windmilled my arms hard and bent at the waist, which forced my torso forward and allowed me to bring my legs back beneath me. There were a series of thoughts that went through my head at this point. They went something like:

Oh, fuck (Again, yes. This was sort of a theme.)

This is going to hurt.

If I can land on my feet I just might survive this.

You know that if this works you’re going to have two broken legs, right?

With all these rapid calculations and morbid thoughts going through my head I didn’t immediately notice that the ladder was afraid for its life as well. How do I know this? Because a split second later on impact I DID notice that it was still hooked around my leg.

4369.44 Joules. 43 Kilowatts. That’s what lit me up on impact.

Out of pure reflex I brought my arms up and wrapped them around the back of my head, because I knew that I wasn’t going to stick this landing and get a 10 from any of the judges. The ladder was screaming in fear and grabbing at the wall – and my left leg. Because of this it canted me to one side bringing the full force of the impact onto my right leg. However, since the ladder wasn’t possessed of higher brain functions, it continued trying to mitigate it’s own fall by grabbing at me. Now, I’m not sure how much y’all know about aluminum extension ladders, but they can tend to have some sharp edges. Not super sharp, but, ya’know, edgy enough that with sufficient force they can cause damage. Well, that’s kind of what happened. The ladder, in its frenzy to save itself, twisted around my left leg and grabbed at my right, cutting a deep gash into my shin. However, I have to say, that was the least of my worries at that particular moment.

Remember those 4369.44 Joules? Well, they ran right up my leg, along my spine, and into my brainpan.

There was a bright flash of light, which in retrospect was either me bleeding off a few kilowatts or a reaction to what can only be described as blinding pain. As much as I would love to think I Teslaed a few kilowatts into the grid by wireless transfer, I suspect the latter (not ladder) is actually the case.

I felt myself pitch backward. I kept my head covered and went splat. That’s about the only way I can describe it. Then I skidded a couple of feet. So did the ladder, but thankfully, at this point, it had decided I was a lost cause and it skidded the opposite direction. This was a good thing because my relationship with it was pretty much on the rocks and I really didn’t want it touching me anymore.

I screamed.

Really loud like.

Mostly because on a scale of 1 to 10 my pain was a 28.

Then, my brain re-engaged the expletive center located somewhere in my frontal lobes. But wait, there’s more. It disengaged all of the filters, and increased the volume to 11.

Remember, there are young children on the other side of the wall being picked up by their parents right about now. Just my luck.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” and literally every other curse word, phrase, and nasty-horrible thing I knew to say – in any language – came out of my mouth at better than full volume, intermixed with guttural screams of agony. Of this I can assure you. I am not exaggerating. I know I am a fiction writer and therefore lie for a living, but this… I’m telling you. Agony. Pure and simple.

It was at this point that one of the pre-school teachers came storming out the door onto the deck. I can only surmise that she assumed I was out there spewing expletives because I was a maintenance guy and something wasn’t going my way, and therefore I was going to fix it by cursing at it. Why do I surmise this? Because she stormed out the door and very loudly shushed me.

Then she saw me and my former friend the ladder lying on the ground and the shush turned into a rather surprised gasp.

More to come…

 

So, there hasn’t been much by way of new fiction coming out of me the past couple of years, I know. There are a number of reasons for that – Various changes in my day to day life, a move, homeschooling our daughter, and a host of other things. One of those things – a major one, in point of fact – is the fact that book piracy has hit me (and many other authors) so hard that it has had a literal impact on the bottom line. By bottom line I mean things such as the difference between having fresh vegetables for dinner or having two bucks worth of pasta and cut-rate sauce for three days in a row. Okay, so maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, but what I am trying to say here is you can live day-to-day or you can have a buffer that will allow you to one day retire without the need for subsisting on dog food and Ramen. That’s kind of where I want to be, because I have never really seen myself as Mel Gibson driving around in a wasteland and shoveling Dinky Di into my mouth (Yeah. Road Warrior reference.)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming anyone (other than the pirates and those who download the pirated books). I’m simply saying that (as I’ve outlined in the past) I took a huge pay cut when I quit my job as a Field Service Technician in favor of writing for a living, but I was still bringing in enough to make ends meet, have some disposable income, and contribute to the IRA here and there. Unfortunately, the impact piracy has had eliminated both the IRA contributions and the ends meeting anywhere near the middle. Those things make it sort of hard to write for a living. THAT SAID, I haven’t stopped writing. I’ve just had to change my schedule because I have had to re-enter the day-to-day work force. Not complaining; just explaining. It is what it is.

However, I am not here to talk about piracy. I am here to talk about ladders. The above intro basically explains where the ladders come from – that being, having re-entered the day-to-day work force. I have two day jobs – one as a dispatcher and parts manager for a printer repair company (go figure. Might as well use those skills I honed for 25+ years). The other is as a part time maintenance guy for the St. Louis Ethical Society. I like both jobs, but I absolutely love the latter (not ladder), because I really enjoy fixing and building things. I have autonomy there, and in short it’s a pretty Zen job for me. Unfortunately, this is where the ladder comes into play.

In case you haven’t heard, I am temporarily confined to a wheelchair. I can get up with a walker, but at this point I have a few more weeks before I can even start physical therapy. This blog entry (or perhaps series of entries) is going to be all about that sentence – the one about the wheelchair, I mean.

Dateline… Friday, December 8, 2017  11:55 AM

I had put in a few hours on projects at the Ethical Society, and then as is my norm I grabbed a stool in the kitchen for 10 minutes and tossed some groceries down my neck. Following that I had dropped my lunchbox off in my truck, then headed to the side of the building with the pre-school while toting an extension ladder. One of the earlier projects had been to clean out the channels for the scuppers that drain the water from the flat roof. I had done one side of the building already, but this side had to wait until the pre-school let out for the day at noon. Parents were already picking up their kids, so the asphalt deck area off that side of the building was clear and I had the go-ahead to take care of that side of the roof. (There’s a giant spire in the middle of the building, so you pretty much have to do the roof in two sections. In short, you can’t get there from here, and vice versa.)

And so, to continue… as I said, I toted the ladder up onto the deck area (very large raised section of the building. Not really a deck sort of deck, per se.) I propped the ladder against the side of the building. Extended it. Locked it. Chocked it. Rattled it. Climbed up a few rungs. Jiggled it. Climbed back down. Did it again. Verified that the ladder was locked in place and solid as a rock. SOLID AS A ROCK. Tweren’t nothing movin’ it short of an earthquake or a hurricane. Trust me, this ain’t my first rodeo. I may not be fond of ladders, but I know how to use one.

Once I was absolutely certain the ladder was solid and safe, I took a quick look at my phone to see if there were any messages. Noted the time, 11:55 AM. Then I started up the ladder. Again, it was solid. Rock steady. Damn thing was going nowhere. While I was trepidatious – as I always am when climbing a ladder – it was that sort of nervousness that makes you extra fucking careful. It forces you to take it easy and not scramble up the ladder. Feel it as you are going. Listen. Make sure you are safe. That’s what I was doing. I arrived at the top of the ladder, still solid as it could be. I carefully swung a leg out onto the flat roof, shifted my weight onto it, and started bringing my other leg around to put myself fully onto the roof.

That’s when the ladder attacked.

For some reason that will likely never be known and can only be categorized as a freak incident, the ladder kicked out from the wall. Unfortunately, my other leg had not yet fully cleared it.

The rung on the escaping ladder caught my foot and yanked me backwards. Much like you see it happen in movies, my entire world shifted into slow motion and at that moment as I pitched into a head down fall with nothing to grab onto, I had a very real feeling I was going to die.

More to come…