I woke up Monday morning this week and it was Tuesday afternoon.

I mean I had been awake on Monday. I was driving towards my standard morning appointment: me and the crossword in the back of Starbuck's. The next thing I knew I was in a very uncomfortable bed in a very small room with lot a lights flashing and going beep-beep all round me.

It took me over sixty hours to find out what had happened, but even immediately on waking I had been sure that I had not been kidnapped for exploitation and amusement. Alas. It was the beginning of a blog not a story, in spite of the very short opened backed garment I was dressed in; something besides my humiliation was the intent. I don't know why believing the intentions more benign made accepting humiliations easier, but it did. Of course, it also makes the story less fun too, I guess.

It seems that on Monday morning I drove my car directly into a car parked beside the road, and pushed that car into another parked car, and that car went into third. Loud popping of auto airbags and car alarms and so forth ensued. I was the only human around, think God, and except for some bruising that might have been caused by the airbags, I wasn't hurt by the wreck at all.

My old steed was ruined I've been told; I haven't seen it. Eight years and it had never once been in a body shop, but the current damage will cost more than its value so it won't be fixed, I guess.

Some of the people that work with that lizard with the British accent that shows up on American TV all the time tell me I'm not liable for any of the damage. An act of God; even my insurance rates won't go up (they say). That's nice; I can live with that since I had done what was legally required to take care of damage I caused; if people had been injured, I would have a different view of my responsibility, however.

Even though the air bags hit me in the face when they popped, even though the seat belt bite into my shoulder, I wasn't really in my car at the time it hit the parked car. My heart had stopped.

I don't remember any of this at all.

Someone started CPR on me at once (there must have been people around, just not close enough to be involved in the damage of the cars.), I don't know by whom, and the official channels don't seem willing to let me know easily. But it was begun before the ambulance got there. I have, it seems, a broken rib and a collapsed lung now. Do the official channels think that I will be angry at the person who did the CPR? Fools.

Well, the rib only bothers me when I cough. You know what works? Take a large pillow and hug it to you chest very tightly, then you can almost manage a reasonable cough.

There is still a hole in my side, some how (I don't understand this) that helps to keep the lung inflated. I don't know how I'm supposed to bathe with that bandage there, and no one has explained it to me, but I haven't had a shower since Sunday night. The hospital people managed things, usually in the dark of night, so I don't feel too rancid, but I need to do something soon beside a sponge bath.

Last week the only prescription I kept in my house (on principle) was Acetaminophen 3, just in case I hit my thumb with a hammer or something. I now have a shelf with seven new prescription bottles on it, and probably will for life; plus some nitro to carry with me always. I feel very old. I am, suddenly, very old.

If I had gone and sat in my garden and let the Zantac I took for the really bad heartburn I had Monday morning kick in, rather than going ahead and go to get my espresso, I would have vanished. All at once, none of you, none of a great many people, not just virtual contacts like you, would have ever known my fate. I would simply have faded away.

SEEK JOY!!!
Love; Jan.