I Feel Nothing, Part 1: Dunkin' Donuts and a Bloody Toilet

I feel nothing, usually. Emotionally I'm the opposite, and cry at every single movie that ever elicited any sort of emotion. But physically...I am a lump of flesh. Things ache, I feel hunger. I have a nervous system. I just seem to not really react as much as other people do to bodily functions and the like.

(There are some exceptions of which the closest of you know and I feel no need to express here. Ha.)

See, I have a fairly high pain tolerance, always have. I wasn't the greatest fan of vegetables growing up, and I never actually ate those Flintstone vitamins I was implored to take by my mother. By all intents and purposes, I actually have a horrible bone structure and I'm probably going to die of a heart attack at age 30 because of too much curated meat.

This is practically Polish people porn.

But, I'm graced with some sort of nerve tolerance of the highest standard, because I've been sliced, diced and broken and I barely flinch. Shots are fun, and I ask to hold a mirror when they remove every atypical mole (which is practically over a dozen at this point, another Polish tradition). Regardless of how this gift was bestowed upon me, it has created two very awkward moments in my life, which of course I will explain now, since self-deprecation is the highest form of art, in my opinion.

#1 Dunkin' Donuts and A Bloody Toilet

It was December 2010, and I had arrived home that afternoon for my senior year Winter Break. I had just had a fight/discussion with a friend about what sort of precipitation was worse, snow or rain? My friend swore that snow was not only the lesser of two evils, but actually a good thing. She was from Texas, so I can allow the ignorance. I severely disagreed, as anyone who has fishtailed on a hilly country road along a wooded abyss knows that snow is the devil. THE DEVIL.

This is how snow angels were actually invented.

Anyway, the fight ended at a ceasefire of nonagreement, and I had driven back to Pittsburgh in a blizzard of white confetti shit known as snow. It was early evening after my arrival, and my father and I were lounging barefoot in his bed, watching either a generic space show or a Morgan Freeman narrated space show. My sister had just stuck her head into the door, saying goodbye. Her friend Tara was picking her up to go the bar. I had the late afternoon coffee pains any coffee addict sports, so I asked my father if I could borrow the car keys to drive to Dunkin' Donuts. He searched for a minute, through his pockets and nightstand. The keys weren't there.

They were on my sister. My sister who was currently being picked up by a friend outside, at the end of the driveway. I had to move quick; my caffeine happiness depended on it. I sprinted, barefoot still, down the hall, down the stairs, and out the door.

I made it three steps down the sidewalk before my barefeet hit some black ice, and I slammed to the ground with the grace of a cartoonesque Three Stooges character, arms flailing and a deafening sacrum-crush. My sister saw from the car, and rushed to my aid (a grand improvement from the 1999 fracture, but that's a story for another time). Blood was....everywhere, a winter carnage scene; yet, my eyes focused on the car keys. Danielle and Tara offered to walk me back inside, but I shushed them away to the bar. With the dangling car keys in my hand, I shuffled my way back inside. I limped up the stairs, down the hall, and into the main bathroom, a blood trail slowly dripping from my foot (or, truly, the limb formally known as foot, because that shit was unrecognizable.)

I sat on the toilet, silent and overwhelmed. My foot hurt, but it didn't hurt any more than it usually did. In my history, feet existed only to consistently ache. Still, I couldn't move. I applied pressure with some towels, and chilled on the toilet for a bit.

I was going to find a funny google image of some girl chilling on a
toilet seat. Don't google that. Here's a baby buffalo instead.

Enter my father, the only man in a house of women: two recently teenagers, and one currently menopausing. The man hates when any bathroom activity is shown out in the open, and encourages self-segregation of the sexes. I can't blame him for that. But from the hall, only my legs were visible, and all he could see is that I was sitting on the toilet.

"Jesus christ, Amy! Not again! Close the fucking door, jeeeeeesus!" he yelled, and slammed the door shut. I tried to call for him to help, but he didn't hear. So I worked my wall towards the sink, a nice seven foot floppy-leg dance that resembled Ace Ventura running with the numbing darts in Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls. Not familiar? Fear not my friend.

I reached my phone, called my father only a room away. He apologized and rescued me from the bathroom. He cleaned up the bloody, beige carpet and kindly drove me to Dunkin' Donuts. We spent the rest of the night watching movies and icing my foot. I called up said friend and provided evidence that she was wrong and that snow was still, in fact, the devil. I was walking on it the next day, and never thought about it ever again.

Sounds like a happy ending, right? WRONG.

That summer, I was having some feet problems (Morton's Neuroma, which predominately happens to old people...go me?), and went to the podiatrist. If there was a punch card for the podiatrist, I would have a free x-ray by now...but I digress. Looking at my x-rays, he asked for the previous doctor's opinion about my healed broken foot.

My...what?

Turns out that ice fall broke my foot. And I walked with broken metatarsals for six months. Huh.

No lasting damage, except for the fact that I can neither ice skate nor regular skate because my foot can no longer fit into a tight, plastic-y shoe without screaming.

This is a Nancy Kerrigan metaphor.
Who would have guessed you'd read one of those today?

Stay tuned for tomorrow's story: A Finger Condom in Saint-Germain-des-Près. A riveting tale, featuring stupidity (on my end) and a moderately attractive Algerian.