Lucky to be alive
Reminds me of a somewhat gruesome story from my childhood/youth. We were vacationing in Miami Beach at the Beau Rivage Hotel in 1957 I believe. I was only 12 or 13. I made a buddy who was as curious as me, and we ended up on the roof of the hotel. All kinds of equipment up there, including a few things that had a fan belt running between two pulleys. There were a couple of small ones and a large one.
Being naturally destructive I shoved my foot into one of the small belts and knocked it off the pulley. The kid with me decided to do me one better. He tried the same thing with the large fan belt, except something went very wrong. His foot got pulled by the belt down through the large pulley, around it and out. He lay on the ground with his big toe hanging by a thread and bleeding like hell. I yelled down from the roof as loud as I could until someone heard me. After maybe five minutes security guys came up there and soon there were lots of people on the roof all over the place. They pretty much forgot about me, but one guy asked me what we were doing up there. I told him we were just looking around.
They took him to the hospital and I never heard from him or anyone else again. To this day I cannot forget that incident and it taught me a good lesson. Don't mess around with stuff you know nothing about!
Jay:
This story reminds me of something that *I* did to myself -- I was the "loser" in this particular exchange.
Back where I was growing up in Yonkers, NY (in Westchester County), there was a park called "Cochran Park." It consisted of a large open field with two opposing baseball diamonds, and on three sides of the park, were fenced-off cliffs that dropped onto the street below.
(Cochran Park was actually the very top of a steep hill that the road crews dynamited the sides off to build roads around it; it was sort of shaped like a large cube, with the park at the top, except that one of the sides was left intact with a large inclined path/walkway to get to the park. Lots of childhood stories concerning what we did on those steep cliffs, but I digress and that remains as stories/accounts for another time.)
Each baseball diamond had that typical tall chain-link fence enclosure that went around two sides of the baseball diamond. It was the classic "bowl turned on its side" shape, where the batter is standing inside the bowl facing out towards the pitcher. The official name for this "bowl on its side" fence area behind home plate is called the
Backstop. It looks like this:
...except the ones at Cochran Park have a much longer "umbrella" that extends out and over the batter box, about a third of the way out towards the pitcher. This is obviously to catch errant hits that might fly out of Cochran Park onto the streets below.
So, as kids, on non-game days, being the hyped-up-on-Fanta-and-Nehi-soda kids we were, we'd have races up the Backstops. Climbing races, that is. With a running start, to see who can sprint up the back side of the Backstops the fastest, and stand atop the Backstop, admiring the view (because Cochran Park was the highest point in that part of Yonkers).
There was one problem, though. The Backstops consisted of two parts: a 20-foot high vertical chain-link fence, and a curved portion that was attached the top of the 20-foot high vertical part. The cut ends of the chain linking at the top of the 20-foot high vertical were NOT pruned or bent over. All along the top of that 20-foot high vertical, you had these "V"-shaped forks that were the cut ends of the chain-link fence material. Normally, these are bent downwards to prevent people from getting cut or punctured. But obviously, the installers of these Backstops decided that no human would ever be up that high, so they left them intact. They look like this (the cut-ends, that is):
So on one particular rainy day, my friends and I were doing our Backstop climbing races -- taking about a 30 foot head start from behind the backstop, running towards it, and with a special rapid stair-stepping maneuver combined with some quick hand-over-hand, bound up the entire 20-foot height up onto the roof of the Backstop.
I did say it was raining that day, right? And we were wearing our sneakers (Converse, Pro-Keds, or Pumas -- those were the top three in those days). Needless to say, wet sneaker rubber contacting wet steel are not the safest conditions.
After one of my buddies had one false start where he slipped during his climb, he finally made it up to the top of the Backstop. He cautioned me that it was slippery, and to really dig-in to the [diamond-shaped] holes in the chain-link with the tips of my sneakers. I take my running start, and with my very first try, I make it nearly to the top of the 20-foot vertical, and was in the process of maneuvering over the top of the vertical, onto the roof of the Backstop, when the unthinkable happened. Both of my sneakers slipped out of the chain-link "holes," and I took a plunge straight down. Except I never hit the ground. Remember those "V"-shaped cut-ends at the top of the chain-linking I was telling you about? One of them caught me deep under the chin during my plunge straight down, about three inches behind the apex of my chin.
Luckily, I tend to clench my jaws closed when I'm climbing, otherwise, the impact would've slammed my lower jaw into my upper jaw, and I would've most certainly shattered all my teeth. But the "V"-shaped barb penetrated my lower jaw, right through the fleshy center, and my tongue was literally "cradled" between the prongs of the "V".
It was a through-and-through puncture wound, and the entire weight of my body was supported by my lower jaw. From my point of view, all I remember was that split-second "oh sh*t" reaction when I felt my sneakers slip loose from the chain-link "holes," and then a bluish-white flash of light like someone took a picture, or as if I were struck by lightning. In fact, when I regained my composure, I literally thought I was struck by lightning; I couldn't move. After everything came back into focus, I tried to turn my head, but couldn't. All I could feel was this "iron fist" right under my jaw, holding me prisoner. I started moving my arms and legs, and realized I wasn't on the ground -- I was in the air, hanging. I could see the chain-link fencing of the curved/angled roof of the Backstop just inches in from of my eyes; I remember seeing the paint flakes, and they looked huge, like I was viewing the surface of the steel under a microscope. And it was only then I realized I was impaled. I felt the prongs of the "V" under my tongue, cradling it, and I tasted that classic metallic taste of blood. Lots of it. It was filling my mouth, and spilling out the sides, in fact. Amazingly, I kept cool. I felt serene, for some reason. Probably those endorphins flooding into my bloodstream at that moment, or something.
Anyway, out of the corners of my eyes, I was able to see the rest of my crew on the ground, looking up at me, and was able to watch the transformation of wide-eyed "what the h*ll just happened?" look, into the reality-based "oh my god!" look. The look of horror, like they were watching someone die. (It was later that one of these buddies relayed to me what he saw -- what I felt with the blood flow inside my mouth, was only a fraction of what was coming out the other side. He said they watched the front of my white T-shirt transform into red in a matter of seconds. I'd severed an artery in my lower jaw.
Luckily, a local firehouse was nearby (a branch of the Yonkers fire dept.), and one of my friends sprinted to it. It was only a couple minutes (seemed like an eternity to me), but I finally heard the classic wail of the fire pumper engine. They had to drive the truck right up to the rear of the backstop, and use the "cherry picker" to lift a fireman and an EMS up to me. I remember both of them grabbing me and lifting slightly to take the weight off my lower jaw, all the while talking gently to me, reassuring me that I'd be ok. But I wasn't crying or anything. By the looks on their faces, maybe they were doing this to reassure themselves that I was going to be ok. But with a combination of lifting me up, and using a large towel to push and squeeze into my jaw to control the bleeding, they were able to get me free of the chain-link barb. I don't think it was but a matter of seconds before I was rushed into an awaiting ambulance that'd arrived during the impalement-removal procedure. I don't remember the ride to the emergency room, because at that point, I'd lost enough blood to black-out.
I woke up in a hospital bed, and all told, I received about 50 sutures to close the through-and-through wound. Luckily the flesh was "popped apart" (cleanly separated), and not torn through. I still have a very noticeable scar to this day, right under my chin, where my beard hairs don't grow. I am lucky to be alive, that's for sure.
One poster mentioned that today's kids have it easy, that they spend their entire days on their duff playing video games, that they've not gone through the trials and tribulations of yesteryear's youth. I couldn't agree more. The impalement story is only one of mine where I'd either seriously injured myself, or else did an incredibly stupid thing that *should have* killed me. But being thankful that I'm still here, I can say it added character. At least it makes for great around-the-campfire stories -- except these really happened to me.
Hope I didn't give anyone the heebie-jeebies.
-Sean
!!!
