My first and worst accident experience

I labeled this experience as a mixture of tragedy and comedy. When I looked back now I find myself laughing but not on the day I had it. The accident happened 2 weeks back and it was a bicycle accident. So let me narrate the exact sequence of how it happened, I hope I can do justice here because my English is not so good [someone told me so few years back but to be frank I don't believe him :)] OK now coming back to the topic.

It was a cloudy evening(Tuesday, Oct 6, 2009), and I left my laboratory at around 5.30PM and while inside the elevator I had this irresistible urge of having M&M( I am crazy after it). One month back I had decided to stop any type of chocolate or candy but when I was trying to decide whether to have it or not I was already standing in front of the vending machine on the ground floor. So broke my resolution and bought one packet of M&M thinking that would be the last time. Then I went to the bicycle stand, took out my bike and started riding. Around 1/2 miles from my workplace there is a downhill for approximately a distance of 100 feet and I was so into M&M that I decided to ride with one hand and used my other hand for eating M&M. I was doing pretty well till around half the downhill but I can't imagine till now why I pulled the full brake of the front tyre. You can imagine now what might have happened----- I was riding downhill and the front tyre suddenly stopped and my body and back tyre were still in motion. Newton's Law of Inertia was what exactly happened. I rolled with my bike and was in mid air for a split of second and fell off in front of my bike with my right side of face and head hitting the cement pavement of the side walk. And also my Ray Ban sunglasses came flying off. In that split second I thought I might die and was like,"Oh! this must be what people who are about to die must have felt". But luckily I didn't die and when I pulled myself up my newly bought corduroy pant was torn in left knee area and my knee was badly bruised with the skin all peeled off. But nobody saw me, I don't know whether I should be happy for that, may be I am happy now because nothing happened. Then I stood up and started driving back home but, on the way I started having mild headache. And that was the time I seriously started worrying about a possible head trauma. Once reached home, I looked my face on the mirror and saw bruises on my face too but they were not bleeding that much. I was more worried about the headache and my Ray Ban sunglasses which cost me around Rs 7000/- because it was damaged beyond repairable. And then I slept off skipping dinner and thinking I might never woke up from it.

But I was lucky here again, I woke up at 7AM the next morning and I was happy to know that I survived the first stage of danger.(May be it was just my imagination and I was thinking too much because I was afraid of dying and also I knew all the possible consequences of head trauma). When I reached my laboratory everybody looked at me and started asking about my signature bruises on my face. And I have to twist the story a little bit because how could I told them that I fell off from my bicycle while trying to eat M&M, that would be too embarrassing. So I skipped that part and told them that I pulled my brake and it just snapped, I didn't know why. Actually that was also a part of the incident, so I was not actually lying but skipping some other facts :) Then I went to the Walgreens store after work and bought some antibacterial ointment and band-aid. There I also bought some invisible band-aid thinking those might be helping for my face as everyone was asking me of the bruises. But the funny part was when I put and went the next day my colleagues told me it looked more obvious. So, I will consider that as cheating of customer as it didn't serve the purpose and also I wasted 5 $ on it. But the flexible band-aid for joint was very helpful.

Two to three days later I was talking to my friends about the incident and I told them that if something bad happened or if I died, my family members would be very upset but some of the people would surely have gossiped about it e.g." She went to USA to die in a bicycle accident and wasted tons of money!!!! she could have easily done that here". We had a good laugh imagining the circumstances but thank to God that it didn't happen that way. I was not able to ride my bike for one week but now I am on riding again but it won't be long as I am finally upgrading to a car ( bought a car recently). And also one of my very good friends told me things like that happened to carry away all your bad lucks, may be what he said is true......The comedy part here was-->I actually thought I might die and was very worried for 2 days and the tragedy part was--> my precious Ray Ban sunglasses which I bought after aspiring for 6 years was gone in a second and I won't be able to wear it again ( I am kind of possessive).

From this incident what I learned is that you should never try to avoid using precautionary measure because anything can happen anytime. Had I been wearing helmet ( I thought I won't be driving it for long as I already bought a car and don't want to waste 40$, so didn't buy one) I might have avoided the worry of trauma to my head and also my sunglasses would have been safe. So, it's kind of penny wise pound fool but I learn a lesson, that's one thing positive. Lastly but not the least anything is possible in head trauma. An incident where you thought is a minor head injury can actually be a life threatening one. So one must always be very careful of head trauma....


....ila