A while a go
Maria posted a mammoth meme that had to come out in a couple of parts. Now, I'm going to bust it up even further. Thirty questions? I haven't got the stamina to answer thirty questions
in one sitting? No way can I sqeeze out anywhere near that in one sitting, especially when for some answers I seem to be prone to a form of literary elephantosis.
So here we go. Maybe five a sitting? I'd say five a day, but that would mean giving up the snooze button time religiously. I can't commit to that with any certainty since the cold snap of the last week.
1) ONE OF YOUR SCARS. HOW DID YOU GET IT?I have a scar on my head. It's this lumpy raised line that will never (as far as I know) go down. It feels funny when I scratch at it, which is often. The story...
I'd been seconded to do a quick pressure job for my absolute favourite of all superintendents, a gruff loud man by the name of Mick. He would grab you, march you to several points that he wanted cleaned up (that all look identical) and fuck off and leave you to it before you could even ask a question. If you cleaned the wrong area you got yelled at. He was a fantastic man who kept you on your toes by the minute.
Anyway, I found myself cleaning a few places in greasy crawlspaces on a time limit. Because there was nobody but me left after he dictated the job and fucked off, I took the rare liberty of taking my hardhat off while I crawled in and worked. I finished, crawled back out, and stood up too early - before the incline of the roof was actually high enough to stand up under. Consequently, I stood up under a set of grease injectors which have adjustment tabs and buried about a centimetre of one into my head.
Fuck that hurt I thought.
Dickhead. I touched my head to feel if there was a bump and instead there was
blood. Fuck. Fuckitty FUCK. First thing, I went for the bag of rags I'd been dragging around with me and plucked one out. I pressed it onto that patch on my head and then had a look. It came back red. Not just a little. A
big, big patch of red.
It's okay I thought.
Head wounds bleed far more than others. I'll go get a second opinion.With that thought I made my move toward the exit out of the belly of the huge machine I was in, off to search for my supervisor at the time, and also my best mate.
Cath'll look after it. She'll tell me I'm a dickhead and it's all fine. Head wounds just bleed a hell of alot, that's all..
So I'm on my way out around this big circular area, and who turns up? You guessed it. Mick.
Fuck. He'll blow his brain at me. There he is, coming into my area of work, yelling out for me at the top of his lungs to see if the job is done. I leave the blood soaked rag on my head and whack my helmet over it to cover up the evidence. He checks my work, I breathe a releived
thanks, Mick and hightail it the fuck out of there to find Cath.
Cath is having lunch in our work truck. I peel off my helmet and rag combination and tell her to look. She's a mother and a horserider. She's been there for all sorts of injuries. She pries my skull and pokes a bit before she turns to one of the other guys and says
it's bad. Go get Mick. Oh, shame.
After that it was decided that I should go to the mine First Aid room. These guys rarely have any fun. They have to be there on call all day and all night, have all the training in the world, but really not much actually goes wrong. So when a case like mine comes in they pull out all the stops. I arrived with a rag on my head and walked out with a full under the chin and a few hundred times around bandage. They have remembered my face for the last few years (primarily, I think) because I made them take photos on my phone for me of just how ridiculous their over the top bandaging effort actually was. We laughed a lot despite the situation.
Next came the trip to Singleton hospital to get stitches. It's a reasonably large town, surrounded by industry and mining, with coal and money spewing out of every orifice. Yet this hospital reminds me of the one that was near the tiny little town I grew up in. It was small and pretty backward. The nurse unwrapped my ridiculously bandaged head. She poked around. She remarked that it would need stitches and disappeared for a while. When she came ambling back through the door she was holding a bit of paper, not the stainless steel bowl of accessories that I expected. There was no doctor following her. Oh, that's right. The doctor had already gone home for the day.
The piece of paper she gave me was a map to the nearest doctor's surgery. In there I spent a further several hours waiting (now in the company of my unpleasant boss) before a doctor pried open my already well clotted and dried wound. He put a stitch in and left me to it. The unpleasant boss stood by while I paid for the whole procedure.
Singleton Hospital? I mean, thank fuck a piece of machinery didn't fall on me. Thank fuck my hand wasn't severed. Who knows what the idea there would be?
Here's a map to the nearest metal shop. They'll cut it off in the press for you.2...No way. I've written enough for today. That'll do.
