I came to with the touch of light rain on my face and the sound of dad’s voice, calling my name. The view was straight up into the cloudy sky. I was strapped in a gurney wearing a collar, and was quickly loaded into an ambulance, and I don’t recall if my dad was with me for the ride, since he was also strapped to a gurney, hurt slightly worse than me. 

I spent most of the  80’s playing with Village Youth Soccer Club, and that weekend day in 1982 started off with the same plan, despite the weather. I dressed in my red and gold uniform and filled my Pizza Hut™ jug with ice and water, and watched the rain stop and start, wondering if a canceling call would come. It did not, so dad loaded me into our brown Ford Escort™ wagon for the drive out to Guilderland or Niskayuna for the game. When the rain intensified, or the thunder rolled in, the decision was made to cancel the day’s game. That’s the last thing I remember until the rain on my face and the sound of dad’s voice.

I can identify the intersection where it happened, now, because my family would mention it when we’d drive by later, and during occasional commutes to the area. I believe we were stopped at a red light at the bottom of a slight hill.  The young woman’s car hydroplaned through the intersection when she hit the slick watery pool and slammed into us. This is all per reports by people whose memories weren’t swatted away when their forehead cracked a pane of auto-glass. 

Because it was 1982, there was not a mandatory seatbelt law. Because I was not wearing a seatbelt, my reflex was to throw my right arm up to shield my face. Because the right arm of a twelve year old boy is exponentially weaker than a spinning car, my wrist broke but kept me from eating a windshield. 

I got another trip to the ER, setting one of my few superstitious patterns, which was breaking a bone at age nine, twelve, fifteen (we’ll get there). “Luckily” I broke that curse when I took the golf-ball to my mouth at age sixteen (see Jim Papa – you actually broke the curse – I am deeply sorry it traumatized you). I got a cast, a couple of stitches, and a summer banishment from the swimming pool. 

The tight confines of the small, economic Ford Escort™ meant my dad’s kneecap broke when it dislodged the center console.  During his hospital stay and surgery, my aunt and uncle, Peggy and Mike Coryea, took me fishing. Mike shared the picture recently, but I can’t find it. It’s of a mopey kid in a canoe with sutures above his left eye. I won’t speak for my dad, but thinking about this now makes me think that he and I “learned” different lessons from that accident. As an adult, it must have been one more thing he couldn’t protect me from, deepening the anxiety that parenting brings. One price of protecting your child is their increasing sense of invulnerability. 

As a kid, this would be just another mishap, some worse than others, from which I would recover with a few scars, and a good story. I have a little PTSD when I’m in a car in heavy rain, but otherwise unscathed. We got a small insurance settlement to compensate for the medical bills. As a minor, “my” settlement went into a trust that I couldn’t touch until I was eighteen. Ten years after the paramedics loaded me into an ambulance, it paid for my Wilderness EMT course, the beginning of my medical career.