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11th Feb 18
M. R. Sellars(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!”
The scene of the crime. Old pic from a different maintenance issue, so you can’t actually see the roof above.
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…
