Memoir Monday: How I developed my life-long fear of Kombie vans.

If you happened to be driving past PBC High School in April of 1991, you may have noticed a stain on the road, not too big, a dark rust-coloured stain.

That stain was my DNA, smeared all over the road.

As part of Memoir Monday, as started by Travis at I Like to Fish, let me explain how this stain, a kombie van and a pack of cigarettes all relate to the day I nearly died.

Can you believe I've actually forgotten the exact date? I nearly died, but can't remember the date.

April sometime, 1991, I'm 14 and wasting time with my mates before high school, hanging out in a park next to the school. Being the bad-ass that I am, I have started hanging around with "the bad element" and have picked up smoking as a way to prove I'm cool to the cute older boys in the group. :oP (Hey, I never claimed to be a brain surgeon.)

So today I have decided to use my lunch money to buy a pack of cigarettes. Yes, thank you, that is excellent decision making, isn't it?

I borrow a pushbike off a girlfriend, and start heading down toward the corner store, where they have a decidedly loose policy on checking ID to by cigarettes. I'm pretty sure I could've bought a nuclear warhead from this store. I'm heading back, when I hear another friend call out from across the road. Of course, I turn my head to look at her as I answer.

Here was my big problem. I was a very occasional bike rider. I did, however, ride a horse at least once a day for a few hours a day. One of the basic principles of riding a horse is that where you look, you tilt your body, and steer your horse. Problem: bikes work kinda like that too. As I look across the road, my body unconsciously leans in that direction, and steers me out onto the road.

I realise what is happening almost immediately, and correct myself, snapping my head round to check what's coming.

And make eye contact with the headlight of an orange kombie van... I can see the headlight through the black bars of the bullbar on the front. It seems impossibly close, that can't be right.

I realise this kombie is in fact that close, and it's going to hit me. Strangely, I'm not scared. I remember thinking "Oh, this is going to hurt."

Funnily enough, it didn't. Oh sure, I got a sore head (where the back of my head smashed the windscreen. The helmet? Safely hanging from the handlebars, thanks for asking), but I didn't actually feel much pain at this stage. Charming stuff, adrenaline.

I remember feeling the breath whoosh out of me, and the hard jolt and scrape of hitting the bitumen. The kombie had hit me on my right side, and I was all tangled up in the bike. I remember trying to push myself off the bike, but nothing responding like it's supposed to.

Then two friends are there, pulling me clear of the bike and laying me on the footpath. One is a senior guy I sort of know, and another is a good friend of mine. He's sitting with my head on his lap, sussing me out while the older boy is doing something to my leg. I can't feel it. A girlfriend is holding my hand, and I see my other friend running across the park toward the school, for help I presume. I am mortified. I have spend my entire school career trying not to be noticed or singled out, and then I go and create a spectacle like this! The friend with my head on his lap won't let me up, he keeps his arms crossed across my chest and my shoulders pressed into his legs. He's talking at me, but I'm not really paying attention.

I struggle to sit up, he presses me down. I get upset and struggle harder. Realising he's dealing with emotion and not logic, he lets me sit up.

Oh.

Bad.

Idea.

My right leg is a mushy red mess. Now, suddenly, I'm in pain. A lot. It's like my brain needed a bit of prompting to react. Is she really hurt? Not sure, check with the eyes. Oh yeah, she's fucked up. Ow.

Now, I see the school principle striding across the park towards us. Remarkably, I have the presence of mind to slip the cigarette pack out of my sweater sleeve where I hid them earlier, and palm them to a friend. I don't want to get in trouble, after all.

By this stage, the driver of the van is here, babbling apologies. She was a Mum, on her way back from dropping her kids at school. Poor woman, I jump out in front of her, and she feels responsible. She is holding my hand, and my whole arm is shaking. I remember thinking very clearly, "Oh, I'm shaking, I'm probably going into shock. Someone should get me a blanket." Interestingly, I keep this information to myself.

About the same time, a paramedic turns up. Where'd he come from? Oh, it appears an ambulance has turned up. I have no idea when, I didn't notice it.

When the driver of the van is convinced to let go of my hand, I am barely trembling. Turns out it was her shaking, so hard it made my whole arm shake. She needs oxygen. I remember feeling sorry for her.

The paramedics give me a delightful green whistle. This contains pain killers, the dope-you-out-of-your-head kind. They put my mushy leg in a temporary splint and do other very efficient, in-charge kind of stuff. I'm vaguely impressed.

I don't remember much about the ambulance trip, but according to my friend who came in the ambulance with me, I am hilarious when on morphine.

In the end, I have a horribly broken right shin, go into surgery to and end up with external traction (bolts sticking out of my shin, with scaffolding over the top holding it all together). I will spend pretty much the rest of the year graduating from this, to a thigh cast, to a walking cast, to a limp. Other than some cuts to the back of my head, the rest of me is unscathed.

Some days, I can't believe how lucky I am.