Skateboarding and Stitches

   
    I was laying on my back and some woman I’d never met, was taking scissors and cutting off pieces of my chin.  Everything was numb at this point and I clung to Jessica- my safe point.

    It was a gorgeous sunny day- I forget whether the month was April or May- but that doesn’t really seem relevant.  It was the first nice day I could remember in a long time.  I was wearing a skirt that day- I hated skirts.  Jordan had a broken foot, and that should have served as an omen.  It didn’t.
    I changed into pants and stood on his skateboard, rolling myself back and forth.  I want to Olly, I told them.  I tried and tried, but after an hour, my most successful jump only got one side of board the in the air.  Soon enough, like all of us with short attention spans do, I grew bored with my failed attempts at being a successful skateboarder.  Try transferring, suggested Jordan, then we’ll start trying to do tricks.  So I stood on the board with one foot and pushed myself with the other and attempted to get both feet on the board and ride without falling off.  After just a few tries, I had gotten the idea down, and in my excitement, grew a little too sure of myself.  I rode along then jumped up and landed back on the board, I learned that this was called a “Hippy Olly.”  Jordan held out one of his crutches and jokingly suggested that I jump over it- I liked the idea, but they all said it was too dangerous.  Frustrated, I focused on transferring and occasional Olly attempts.  Then Jeremy came up to me and wanted to go down the steep hill in the sidewalk.  I was excited, but Jordan told me to try going down the small hill first.  As I picked up the board to walk up the hill, Michael walked over and lifted up his shirt revealing a series of large cuts along his ribs from falling down the stairs.  I laughed and made a joke about how I’d never broken anything or gotten stitches and that maybe I would today.  So I reached the top of the hill and sat the skateboard down.  I climbed on the board and started riding down the hill, and I was so excited that I was actually being successful for once.  The next thing I knew however, I was launched forward and my hands skidded across the pavement, one arm twisted around and my head hit the concrete with a great amount of force.  I got up and laughed, brushed my hand on my pants and winced at the stinging sensation that immediately shot through my palms.  The top of my left arm and hand were a little bloody, but for the most part, I was impressed at how little I had gotten hurt.  My chin stung a little, and I reached up and touched it, only a small amount of blood was passed onto my fingertips, so I walked over to the guys laughing, and they laughed at me too and suggested that I may not be ready for the big hill just yet. 
    Jessica rushed over to me, like a worried mother.  She seemed relieved that I was laughing, but then she looked at my chin and paused.  Um, you’re going to have blood dripping onto your shirt in about five seconds, she warned.  With her, I went into the building and into the bathroom to assess the damage to my face.  I lifted up my chin and saw a small, circular puncture in the skin just above the bone.  She grabbed me a wet paper towel which I used to clean up some of the blood, but it didn’t help much, as it just continued to bleed.  As I inspected the wound a little more closely, I saw a strange glob of a yellowish orange tint.  I reached up and pulled the glob out, and upon doing so, realized that it was a piece of fat that had been dislodged from my face.  Jessica insisted that I go to the nurse, swearing that I was going to need stitches.  I resisted, saying it’s fine, I’ll just slap a band-aid on it, but she wouldn’t let up.  Finally I gave in and walked with her toward the health center, just beyond the oak tree where all the guys were sitting.  They inquired about my chin and I informed them of Jessica’s insistence upon my needing stitches and they all said, suck it up and just put a band-aid on it.  Thank you, I replied, that is what I said.  But I went over there anyway, and the nurse laid me down and looked at my injury.  She said that it was very deep and would indeed need stitches, but she was unable to do such a procedure.  So she attempted to use plastic stitches, the kind that stick on, to hold my chin together, but there was too much blood and they wouldn’t stay on.  So she put a couple more plastic stitches on and put a large band-aid over them to keep them in place, and gave us directions to the hospital.
    How were we going to get there?  Nobody had a car.  After a few moments, we remembered a friend of ours who had a car and she allowed us to borrow it to make the trip to the hospital.  The journey there was an adventure in and of itself, trying to make it through downtown Jackson at 5:30 in the afternoon, having no idea where we were going.  Thankfully, my other friend Juli was there as well and she is amazing at reading and decoding maps, a talent I am not blessed to behold. 

    So there I was, laying on a table, staring at the ceiling, and Dr. So and So was shooting my chin with a numbing solution, which was close to being the most intense pain I’d felt in a long time, as she was sticking a large needle directly into the wound.  She cut off excess skin and held my chin together with three well-placed stitches, insisting that I return in a week to have them removed, that a campus nurse would not know how to do this, but I ignored her advice and had the same lady who’d suggested a trip to the hospital remove the stitches several days later. Unfortunately, it appeared as though the stitches were sewn to each other and not just my skin, resulting in a reopening of the wound, and extra time with thread in my face.
 
  In class, Michael asked to see the damage and laughed, saying, weren't you hoping to end up with stitches or something?  The worst part of the whole situation was that it appeared as though I was growing a beard for a week.