I fell off a flying fox (approx. 1992)

2. I Fell Off A Flying Fox

As a general rule I’m not a very well-coordinated person. However, what sets me apart from others is that even though I know I’m uncoordinated, I have still managed to participate in and fail at a surprising number of unnecessary physical pursuits.

This little tale traces the dawning of the realisation that I would never be a gifted, spring-loaded athlete, blessed with skill and poise. I think I was nine, so the scene was certainly set early.

As most children my age were trampolining (more on this in another post), back-flipping into swimming pools and taking jumps on their bike, I always had my doubts. However, I could never be considered a ‘chicken’, and was instead driven by an unsaid social and environmental pressure to engage in such activities myself. Activities that I now consider foolhardy at best. At worst? Deadly.

The setting of this story is a park in Bendigo (as well as Bendigo Base Hospital). The protagonists? A flying fox, a hot jam donut and a long car trip.

Our family had taken a trip to Bendigo and we were soaking up the last sunshine of a particularly happy Sunday before leaving for home. One of countless fun-filled family holidays we enjoyed in my younger days.

So what does a family do before loading up the car and driving 3.5 hours back home? If you answered ‘eat a hot jam donut and then go to a park’, you’d be correct.

It was the aforementioned social pressure and an ideal of ‘wanting to fit in’ that found me on this fateful afternoon playing in a seemingly care-free way on a small playground in Bendigo. While my typical playground pursuits were undertaken with a strong respect for gravity – slides, swings, whizzy-dizzies at best – today was unique in that this particular playground featured a Flying Fox.

It just so happened that a caravan selling hot jam donuts and other treats had positioned itself in close proximity of this playground, and it was decided that it would be a great entrée for a play session.

The experience of eating a jam donut, which to that point I’d never sampled, was probably a seven out of ten for me. The jam wasn’t too hot, the dough tasty and sweet and it was coated with a generous topping of caster sugar.

Little did I know that it was this tasty, cinnamon-tinged caster sugar that would be the factor behind my eventual downfall.

After a rapid but enjoyable donut consumption experience, I swept over to the playground and began to engage in my usual activities of swinging, sliding and spring-loaded-horse-rocking. Until I saw my sister having what appeared to be an amazing time on the flying fox.

To this point in my life, the flying fox held little appeal. It wasn’t something I’d had a lot of experience with. Manangatang wasn’t known for its playground innovations, and the stock swing/slide/whizzy-dizzy combo held sway for generations.

But seeing my sister step onto the platform, grab the handle, swing her momentum forward and slide to the other side appealed to me at that moment. Quite possibly it could have been a coming of age. A confidence booster.

So I wandered over bravely to the platform, and being encouraged by all around me I grabbed the handle and pushed off.

The rest is a blur, but my patchy memory and the tales told by others present on that day suggested that a combination of my lack of coordination, the height of the flying fox and the icing sugar on my hands culminated in the fall that led me to black out for a short time. I am told that I landed squarely on my head.

In those days there was none of modern society’s namby-pamby rubber padding or even bark chips beneath playground equipment. These were harder conditions driven by harder times. Which was evidenced by the concrete-hard compacted dirt and faded memories of broken bones past beneath this flying fox.

If given the power to express itself directly, my skull may not have been so flippant about a safe landing zone.

The next thing I knew I woke up in Bendigo Base Hospital with a small ‘Gold Digger’ toy purchased to help me feel better. It did, but I must admit that through my confusion the only thing I could think about was that I wasn’t as keen on hot jam donuts as I once was.

But while a short hospital stay and a diagnosis of a mild concussion might seem like a fitting end to this unfortunate tale, the truth is far more telling. The punctuation mark on what turned out to be a derailed afternoon was a swelling sensation of nausea I felt outside of Sea Lake on the return journey.

I had never vomited in my life to this point, and have only done so once since (from any causes, remarkably). My memory of it was sketchy, but I do recall depositing back my donut to the earth from which it was created. Poignant indeed.

What did I learn from this?

It was certainly the dawning of the realisation that I’m not the most physically adept person out there, and set the scene for what proved to be an accident-prone teenage phase.

It also meant that I would never again touch a hot jam donut. Even the hipster-led trend of donut balls stuffed with jam and chocolate sends shivers down my spine. Icing sugar has escaped further scrutiny, but it’s on notice.

I stood on a tooth (2010)

1. Stood on a tooth

People stand on things all the time. Chewing gum, animal poo, mud, the ground. I could go on...

Standing on things is an inherent consequence of biped perambulation typically exhibited by humans. Yes, while you might see people wearing shoes on their hands if you go to Hay on the wrong weekday, we as humans tend to stand on things all the time.

Wearing shoes is a surefire approach to minimising the negative impact of standing on less desirable objects and I should say up front that I'm a staunch advocate of shoe wearing.

However this story is about an unfortunate protagonist (myself) standing barefoot on a human mandibular molar. For those of you playing along at home that's a tooth.

The story begins with a rather typically festive evening in London's West. A grotty and rather antipodean suburb called Hammersmith was the scene for the beginning of this tale; specifically inside a bar. 

My good lady wife and myself had been purveyors in jollility that eve, with the occasion being the proximity of some good friends and the participation of Australia in the Football World Cup.

While Australia lost comprehensively that evening to Germany, our group had decided to celebrate simply being alive and together in another city. A few beers and a sneaky souvlaki later and we were ready to go home to our hotel in Chelsea.

Given our relative lack of funds and the unusual clarity and mildness of this particular London evening, our minds were made up to walk this 5km journey rather than take a cab or unlock the puzzle of the buses.

While this walk home involved a few small incidents, like a stop for Pringles at a random convenience store, a conversation with several groups of drunkards and a quick bathroom break down a side alley, the act of standing on a tooth is the one that stood out.

Like something out of a good Seinfeld episode, the event was the confluence of several small and seemingly insignificant events.

First, our choice to walk would have to be high on the list of such events. The fact that we'd been to Barcelona some weeks earlier also contributed.

While a trip to Barcelona is not usually enough to cause one to stand barefoot on a tooth in a completely different city in three weekends' time, this one was. After all, we had both purchased a new pair of canvas street shoes that made us look incredibly fashionable but required some 'wearing in'.

My wife was clad in said shoes this fateful evening. As to be expected, they were causing her some discomfort as the canvas struggled to give like a new pair of skinny jeans on a chunky clothing store saleswoman. This discomfort was the direct driver of the removal of said shoes from her feet.

Now being an empathetic and attentive boyfriend as I was/husband as I am, I elected to remove my shoes as well. I suppose it represented some (admittedly non-sensical) show of solidity in the face of adversity. You can see how this may have been a contributing factor.

The final factor that worked to drive a tooth into my foot was the yet-to-be-confirmed fact that a human had lost a tooth in the proximity of the exact footpath that I chose to walk on to complete my journey.

I believe that I must have stood on it for a while prior to noticing its intrusion, which may seem odd to someone who doesn't know what already blistered feet on asphalt feels like. But I soon figured out that the general blister pain was being accentuated by a rather acute digging sensation.

You can imagine my combined shock, disgust and (to be frank) awe at discovering the nature of the podiatric intruder. My wife between loud laughs and mouthfuls of Pringles identified it as a tooth, although I probably didn't need to be told.

As I mentally Googled what the potential consequences of someone else's tooth being embedded in the heel of my foot could present for me, the few hours between getting to bed and dawn slipped away.

I can't even tell you what happened to the tooth. I'd like to think some dishevelled street dweller came upon it quite by chance to complete his collection of human teeth.

What did I learn from this?

This situation was completely new to me and taught me a few things about the way the world works.

The first lesson is that a man standing on a tooth must appear hilarious to his partner.

Additionally, I was pleasantly surprised to note that the force of an 82kg man standing on a tooth isn't enough to force said tooth through the skin on his heel. For this I am glad.

I also learned what a mandibular molar is and what its root looks like when imprinted into my right foot.

But I'd be a fool to ignore the lesson that it's not a great idea to walk barefoot for 5km through London after 1am. It would seem obvious, no?

Things that I've done...

After the tumult of last year's career-morph and its orbit of chaos and mood swings, I've got to a space where I've had more time to reflect on the craziness that ensued. This includes what has become the best 'terrible four-day job story' ever heard among friends/relatives/colleagues/strangers.

I think writing about these events made them just a little more manageable for me. Additionally it led to me thinking about the other strange experiences I've been involved in over the years.

Upon creating a list of said encounters, my mind has identified that I have a curiously diverse and quite strange collection of life experiences. I'm not saying that I've led an odder life than anyone else per se, but just that I have engaged in and lived through pretty weird stuff.

I'm now thinking that I'll probably just write about these too as time comes upon me - in the main for posterity purposes as I'm quite sure that nobody reads this thing anymore.

I'll also try to eke out some sense of learning or life lessons for each encounter. After all, it would be troglodytic indeed for me to just drift through such things unchanged or uneducated.

Having said that, I foresee an issue with determining what I have learned...