Superhero (I Am Not A)

 I have had many opportunities in my life to prove to myself (and anyone who questions it) that I am definitely not a superhero.

If the lack of flight-without-aircraft (and a pilot, and a flight crew, and a ground crew, and...) isn't an obvious clue, there's also a distinct lack of laser vision, super (and sometimes even ordinary) strength, x-ray vision (boy, could I have used it a few times - think of the ER savings!), super speed (unless you look at it from a sloth's perspective, and then I'm The Flash, baby!), and a number of other egregious holes in my superhero resume.

On February 15, the PTB decided I needed yet another reminder of my not-superheroness.  On no less a day (not that it's really a big deal, and I genuinely mean that) than my very own birthday*, I ignored my desire to stay a-bed and took the Evil Genius out for a practice drive.  Wait...no...umm...I mean I let the Evil Genius practice driving.  Yeah.  Because I don't need to practice driving the Evil Genius, what with him not having wheels or a mechanical motor or even reliable steering.  Anyway.  I really didn't want to be out in the world, but I had told him we could go driving so he can get his hours in (Redneck Central has a graduated licensing system and he needs a certain number of hours before he can move to the next level) and I try not to disappoint my children more than once a fortnight, so out we went.

I plan routes to be interesting and maybe a little challenging - hills, blind turns, multiple lanes, turn lanes, right turns, left turns, lane changes, traffic lights, parking - and cover things likely to be on driving tests and part of the driving experience.  On the 15th, we were supposed to head to a local parking lot and work on the various types of, rather obviously, parking.

He asked if we could do a loop on some local roads, first, and since more practice is better, I agreed.

He was doing well, no big surprise, and we were on a back road, making a left turn, when things went rather sideways.

Literally.

He'd stopped, checked traffic, and was just beginning the turn when there was a sort of powder, screechy, crunchy, popping thud.

An oncoming car hit us, her driver's side nose to our driver's side nose.  Airbags deployed, crumple zones crumpled, anti-lock things anti-locked, and things generally got messy, loud, smoky, and quiet.

I'll skip all the details of dealing with the wreck.  That's not what this post is about.

Onward.

Thanks to safety features in both vehicles, there were no dire injuries.  I can vouch for the fact that airbags work.  Oh, boy, do they work.  With terrific enthusiasm, they work.  In combination with locking, 3-point seatbelts (standard issue), they do a fantastic job of making sure that the human body doesn't wind up being distressingly intimate with the dashboard, the windscreen, or possibly the pavement outside the vehicle.  They work painfully well.

And here comes the most recent proof that I am not a superhero.

I didn't take a ride on the bus - I was busy dealing with the incident and didn't feel the need - but I was hurting.  I mean, airbags, wow.  As things began to motherfucker that hurt!, I quietly chanted the mantra "You're a witch.  Deal now, feel later" and dealt.  Once the incident was cleaned up, my son reassured a few million times, the other driver hugged, looked after until rescue came to carry her off for a precautionary ER visit, and my beloved Calliope (the Tahoe) hauled to Casa de Crazy via tiltbed and dropped off on the driveway, I asked Mom (who drove down from Dragon's Rest to rescue us because Mom) if we could maybe, possibly, pop on over to the local ER, because holy carp, airbag!

An aside - I wound up at the same ER as the other driver and unintentionally got to listen to the crew talking to her about test results.  Soft tissue damage, nothing wrong with spine, no broken bones, no internal organ damage, whew!  Also, aside from some rather reasonable psychological bruising and some uncomfortable physical bruising, the Evil Genius was ok and opted out of the ER (or as he likes to think of it, Plague Central).

I only went because the ouch was escalating rapidly, and it was an ouch I hadn't experienced before, so I didn't know how to label or process it.

When they offered me a pain killer, I actually accepted it.  That's kind of a big deal, for me.

Tests and scans performed, I was sent home with a couple of prescriptions for anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxer and the admonition that it will hurt for a while.

Yeah.

About that.

I slept in the recliner for a week, when I slept.  Are we sure nothing is broken or bent?  Really?  Because wow.

The second week, I alternated nights in bed  - fun getting horizontal and then for the love of all that's holy, don't move! - and the recliner.  For those two weeks, I ruthlessly quashed coughs, sneezes, and hiccoughs (sonofabitch!!!) and didn't move or breathe unless I had a desperate need to.  I let myself get slightly dehydrated for a few days because drinking means peeing means standing up means sitting down means standing up again means leaning to use the flush lever means sitting back down in the recliner means oh, I don't think so.

You know how, in movies and tv, the hero gets kicked in the chest or punched in the middle and just kind of shakes it off, or pops right back up, keeps fighting, and the next day looks and acts like nothing happened?

Not me, yo.  Almost three weeks after the incident, I am still moving gingerly, awkwardly.  I'm much better, really, and thankful, but still hurting and rather over it. 

So, yeah, no super healing or invulnerability, then.

I am super impatient, though, so maybe that's one of my powers?  Because two days after the incident (hmm, The Incident may have to be my next band name, I'm thinking maybe some kind of Indie Folk genre), I thought I should be fine, and apparently my poor old body has other ideas.  We are in negotiations, but I think I'm losing.

Life goes on, and we'll get back to what passes for normal around here, and I have one more reminder that I am in no way a super anything, except in a rather mundane, human way.  Dammit.


*And would you believe that this wasn't actually the worst thing to ever happen on my birthday?  Because it wasn't.