The Day I Was Attacked By The Ground

It was in the middle of mock exams, which were in the middle of winter, so everything was really fucking freezing. I’d ventured out that morning as well-prepared to endure the cold as I possibly could be without visibly violating my school’s (shite) uniform code.

I had two exams that day, which meant I would be at school, in the cold, for an indeterminable length of time in between them which would most likely be at least a couple of hours. As I was walking into school, it was very cold and the clouds looked none-too-friendly, but it wasn’t raining then and I thus concluded that I was going to be okay despite not having a hat, umbrella, or rainjacket.

My first exam of the day was music. In the middle of the exam, as I was studiously doing my music theory paper, it started to rain. This was particularly problematic because, in a moment of extreme intelligence, I had opted not to bring lunch with me that day and thus would have to walk to the nearest place which sold food, in the cold and the wet and the wind. And when I got out of my music exam, this is exactly what I did.

Because my ears are very sensitive to the cold, I ended up having to wrap my scarf around my head. By the time I reached the dairy, it had stopped raining (more or less), but I was a sorry sight to behold.

I went into the dairy and bought a pie, as it was the only semi-decent hot food available and I was in desperate need of warming up.

This was a mistake.

When I got outside with my pie, I found that the only picnic table for miles around was completely wet from the rain. With nowhere else to go, I resolved to eat it under the miniscule awning of the shop. For those of you who have never tried to eat a pie out of the bag with gloves on whilst standing up in the cold: don’t. It is one of the most physically demanding things you’ll ever fucking do.

More ‘meat’ ended up on the sides of my face than actually in my mouth. Whether this was because I was eating the pie with my hands instead of with a knife and fork as one is supposed to, or whether it was simply because I was retarded, I do not know. But one thing was for certain: the more of the pie I ate, the more difficult it became.

By the time I had finished the pie, I was wearing most of it, in the form of pastry flakes and meat stains. I may have also been crying a little, not because the consumption of the pie had been a complete failure but because, despite the packet saying it was a steak pie, it tasted more like gristle and tendon.

It had also started to rain again.

Having made a complete mess of myself (and not feeling any warmer at all), I walked slowly and despondently back to school. On the way, I ran into a classmate from history (which happened to be the afternoon exam I was hanging around for), and briefly chatted to him before he went on his way to the dairy I had just come from. Once back at school, I ran into another friend and discovered that I had developed a runny nose from the cold. He made fun of my voice. We then decided to go for a walk to his friend’s place, which involved walking across a park. And this was where the ground attacked me.

The park had those low chainlink things around it. As I was stepping over one of them, the toe of my shoe clipped the edge and the next thing I knew, I was face-down on the cold, wet, muddy ground.

This is what it felt like:

This is what actually happened:

I just lay there, face-down in the mud for a few long seconds, unable to comprehend what the fuck had just happened to me.  Then my friend offered me a hand and pulled me to my feet. Covered in mud and damp grass and god knows what else, and with pain springing to both my knees and my right hand, I was suddenly not in the mood for anything, but I managed to laugh off the fall pretty well.

By this time, the aforementioned history classmate was walking back towards us across the park, visibly laughing. I decided then that I wasn’t in the mood for anything that wasn’t a bath or no more exams, and also that I was no longer going to accompany my friend to his friend’s place, and instead headed back to school with my history classmate. He very kindly waited for me outside the girls’ toilets while I cleaned myself up as best I could. There was no hot tap, so I had to sponge down my muddy uniform as best I could with wads of wet paper towels, all the while gritting my teeth against the frigid water. When I emerged – cold, wet, sore, and shivering – I was beginning to feel quite miserable. My right knee, which had caught the fall most heavily, was beginning to ache considerably, and my extra-thick tights had done absolutely nothing to cushion the blow of the demon-concrete-boxer-ground. But I had an exam to sit, and I refused to let a little fall be a reason for not doing as well as I could.

My classmate and I went to the school library. The plan was to do some history revision, but I spent the majority of the time sitting there, staring glumly at my history notes whilst looking and feeling generally shit. Not to mention dripping muddy water everywhere.

All attempts at remaining positive and not letting the fall affect my performance in the exam were failing.

Soon, it was time to go to the exam. I had developed a limp by this time, and hobbled all the way to the exam room, struggling to keep up with my classmate’s moderate walking pace. But once I was actually in the exam, I found that I was able to forget about my pain and focus on cranking out an essay. That is, until this started happening.

My knee had begun to swell up as I sat there writing. The bigger it got the more difficult and painful it became to move it around, and consequently, the harder it became to focus on my essay. Due to the fact that large parts of my uniform were still wet right through from the rain/the fall/cleaning off as much of the mud as I could, and that the exam room was very cold, I had also begun to shiver. Despite all this, I somehow managed to complete my essay to a decent standard and finish the other paper before limping my way to the car.

Once I finally made it home, I had a shower in which I was able to properly inspect the damage.  A huge bruise was already forming on my right knee, as well as a slightly more modest one on the left knee. Both of my shins were red and bruised, and somehow another small but tender bruise had appeared near the top of my thigh (this was actually the last of the bruises to fade). When I showed the bruises to my mother later, she was at first puzzled as to how a bit of muddy ground could have inflicted such injuries. She later concluded that I must have landed on the roots of a nearby tree, but I don’t recall feeling any roots under the ground I landed on. To this day, it is a mystery to me.

That night (and for the following couple of days), things like bending, sitting, and kneeling were immensely difficult and could not be done without support from a person or an inanimate object as I cautiously lowered my body down. Kneeling was especially painful, and I had to put all of my weight on my ‘good’ knee. Going up and down stairs was interesting. To go up, I had to support myself using the railing and/or the wall as I put my left foot on a stair and then slowly brought my right foot up beside it, being careful not to bend my knee. Going down, I devised a method whereby I held onto the railing as I slowly lowered my legs onto each step. Going one way took me several minutes.

During this short but pronounced period of my life, my mother referred to me not by my name but as ‘Limpalong’.

You guys are all jealous of my super epic life.