The Broken Elbow Quadrilogy - Part II.

I will never roller skate again. I’ve come to terms with this years ago, for three very distinct reasons.

One, I’m terrible at it, and I refuse to evolve for an activity that has remained relatively unevolved since its inception. As a child, every time I was invited to a birthday party at a roller rink, I grimaced and attempted to lie my way out of it. I never wanted anyone to know that I sucked at skating, and saw no purpose in spending my afternoon unintentionally doing a newborn Giraffe impression in front of my friends. At the bulk of these parties, I would play video games and hide in the bathroom during the ‘All-Skate.’

Yes, I’m serious, and yes, I know how sad that is. Besides, you weren’t the one that was crying in the handicapped stall while ‘The Limbo Song’ blared over the rink PA system. Those are memories you tend to remember, particularly when you’re quartering a prostitute in your basement.

In 1994, my next-door neighbor suffered the most disgusting arm breakage I have ever seen as a result of Rollerblading (a craze that died out almost as instantly as Hypercolor t-shirts and PM Dawn, I might add). The image of her laid-out on the sidewalk, screaming bloody murder and clutching her S-shaped right arm is etched into my brain forever, as it should be. That is something that I do not want to happen to me as a grown man with a job and mortgage, and nothing short of a full-on Knight costume is going to prevent it from happening.

The main point here is probably my endless attempts to save face in public while simultaneously embarrassing myself in tow. It literally frightened me as a child to risk a pratfall in front of my friends, no matter if everyone else was doing it and nobody cared. Ironically, I was always more than willing to take a pratfall if it was the punchline of a joke that I was telling, but we’ll save the deep psychoanalysis for another time. I ain’t drunk enough.

Two, the last time I skated, I severely sprained my wrist. This happened in gym class, of all places, and I didn’t know what had happened until hours later. Sure, my wrist had turned black, hurt like a Fungo Bat to the gonads and I threw up twice immediately afterwards, but I ignored it and continued on with my day until I could no longer hold anything or move it properly (ever try to work a combination lock with the same arm you’re clutching four textbooks in?). When I finally went to the nurse’s office, I was all but thrown into the car and rushed straight to the emergency room. Protective gear or otherwise, my brain will not let me forget that roller skating is a recipe for humiliation, pain, and limp, black wrists.

Three, and this is purely the Elitist part of me speaking…it just ain’t my cup of tea.

The bad 90’s dance music (or worse, the token ‘Wedding Reception’ music), the 30 children flopping themselves around the rink while celebrating a birthday party, the token old guy that’s all by himself and way too good at it, the fact that every roller rink is in a part of town where people get stabbed hourly, the nostalgic, teenage Roller Rink flashbacks to every failed relationship and nonreciprocating glance…why would I subject myself to this? As an adult, I’ve built my life around protecting myself from the things that destroyed me as a child, so why would I willingly step back into the Time Machine of Failure? I write essays about stuff like that so I don’t have to re-live them in a literal sense. A roller derby is where I want to be; throwing myself onto the rink is an entirely different bear.

“Because it’s fun!”

Sort of, I suppose. But if I really wanted to strap wheels to my feet and crash into shit, I could just get drunk at my house like an adult. And I wouldn’t have to hear the Chicken Dance, either.

TOMORROW - PART III.

The Broken Elbow Quadrilogy - Part I.

As some of you may know, the Missus broke her elbow a few weeks ago at the Roller Rink. Inspired by the awesomeness and recent stratospherical growth of the local Roller Derby squad, she decided to strap on the skates and give it a go, with the hopes that she may one day join the elite ranks of the female rink warriors.

And no, this is not a CDP Flashback Essay from 1977. This new Willennium has been a bust since Day One, so it stands to reason that we would take pride looking backwards for something fun to do on the weekends, and we’ve already thoroughly mined the 80’s and 90’s for fuzzy nostalgia. The jetpacks are still decades away; tough girls, roller skates and Pabst Blue Ribbon are empowering, sexy and forever cool.

Anyway, like most of us have done at one point or another while skating, the Missus forgot to wear protective gear and took a nasty spill. What most of us haven’t done, however, is snap your radius in two. From what the Missus and Wikipedia tell me, the radius is a bone attached to your elbow that hurts like hell when broken. The prognosis is typically a sling, truckloads of Vicodin, and if you’re really lucky, a surgery where they have to pin everything back into place. As a woman who has to pass through a metal-detecting weapons screening booth every day at work, you can see why this would be a serious conflict of interest.

On the day that the Missus decided she no longer wanted to use her right arm for three weeks, I took an uncharacteristically solo trip up north to visit my folks. I left town because I had no intention to ever set foot inside a roller rink again, as I still harbor deeply-rooted fears that alter my decisions to this day. More on that tomorrow.

I spent most of the day thinking about her, as we typically don’t spend weekends apart. I hoped that she was having a good time with Ben and Sherry, and assumed that if anyone got hurt, it would most assuredly be Ben. Seriously, dude’s about 6’2” and his center of gravity is somewhere between his first and second vertebrae. I predicted some sort of concussion or blunt trauma to the back of the head, and waited patiently for the text message while sitting at an Italian restaurant with my mom and sister.

When my phone finally chimed, I got a relative first-glimpse as to how the Missus likes to break bad news:

‘In Urgent Care. Broke my arm :)’

You read that right. She took the time to tack on a smiley. Either because she wanted to downplay the severity of the incident and didn’t want me to worry, or because she was hopelessly in shock.

After cleaning up the spat Killian’s Red from my polo shirt, I hit the road and headed for home. My feelings were mixed. First and foremost, I wanted to make sure that my wife was okay. Secondly, I wanted to passively scold her for not wearing elbow pads, as I had stressed since Day One. Finally and most selfishly, I wondered if this meant I had to drive her to work and make dinner for the next few weeks.

All of these racing thoughts made me feel like a parent who just watched their child lock themselves in the family minivan and pull the shifter down, careening the vehicle into the street. Once you make sure they’re not dead, you want to instinctively hug and strangle them at the same time. Fortunately, she looked so damn pathetic with her sling on, I just shook my head and tried really hard not to cry.

“Hey, you know what goes really well with Vicodin? Jameson.”

“Oh, you’re hilarious.”

That first night, she slept for fourteen hours.

TOMORROW - PART II.

Season 5 - Episode 11: "Whatever Happened, Happened."

Another Lost Friday is upon us, we have much to discuss.

To start things off, I want to send out a big Thank You to the loyal members of the CDP Network, as we broke the 30,000 hit mark last month for only the third time in CDP history. I appreciate it very much, even if my Free MySpace Poetry was once again criminally ignored by the masses. I get it; you don't like satire, fine. See if I care.

Next up on my mind is the constant bewildering ridiculousness that is the Internet. The idea of a magic box that could produce any insane fantasy you could possibly conjure has been the talk of Sci-Fi novels since the turn of the Century, and I think that we take it for granted every day now that it's been here for almost 20 years. To me, it's absolutely amazing that I can fantasize about watching the Rockafire Explosion play an Arcade Fire song, only to have the Internet nod in my general direction, say "Thy will be done," and give me exactly whatever nutball thought that comes to me at 3:45am. If you presented the Internet in it's current form to a World's Fair in 1922, you'd be heralded as a God. In 2008, you're just another lonely man with a Furry fetish. Unreal, and worth taking a moment to appreciate.

And no, I'm not high right now.

Thirdly, I have no idea why I willingly allow a bunch of college kids that I don't know to take money out of my pocket every March, but for the 12th straight year, I lost the NCAA office pool in spectacular fashion (my last victory was in 1997, my Sophomore year in High School, when I was the only guy in my entire class to pick Kentucky). I have one team left in the Final Four (UNC), and I picked them to lose to Pitt, which means that I've been dicked for well over a week now. Thanks Barack Obama; I followed your lead by mimicking your bracket, and you whizzed it down your leg instantly. Makes me wonder what else you're going to whiz down your leg, hmm?

I've got my eye on you.

Getting into this week's episode of Lost, I quite enjoyed it, and thought it set up the remainder of the season quite nicely. From Jack once again going apathetic, to Alpert dragging Ben back to the Temple (presumably for the Temple Games, immediately following the Steps of Knowledge), to Hurley asking all of the questions that we'd like to ask, this week did exactly what it needed to do, regardless of if you thought it was slightly plodding or not.

So let's get to the funny.


("I'm never gonna WHARRGRRBL dance again, guilty feet have BLARGHALABA got no rhythm, thought it's easy GAAAAHHHHRB to pretend, I know you're GOLOLOLGGGH not a fool!!!")


("Sorry Kate, the line for child-kidnapping whores forms over there.")


(Walgreens: Voted 'The Best Place To Abandon Your Child' for the twentieth year in a row.)


("YOU CAN'T SEE ME!")


(Wait a minute...where have I seen this before...)


(Man, just when I think I have this show figured out.)


(Dear Lost, before this season is over, please allow me to watch Horace's withered husk get butchered and scattered to every corner of the Island. Thank you.)


("Well, the bad news is that Ben is in really bad shape. The good news is that, because of him, we've successfully located the Gay Gene.")


("...And then, and then the monkey smells his finger and falls out of the tree. Dur-hur!")


(Hurley: The Thing That Only Eats Hippies.)


("If I don't have a home pregnancy test and a Bacon Wave in my hands in less than three seconds, you will rue the day I entered this Walgreens, sir.")


(A ever-confused Jack gets stuck in his t-shirt yet again.)


("Yes, I will fix Ben for you...with my sexiness.")


("God...why did I have to steal such a loser of a kid?")


(I've gotta say, Ben's tube top is not working for him at all.)


("Oh, hey there, Locke...oh, poopie.")

Well, there you have it, another Lost Friday in the books. Start the conversation in the comments section, check out links to every Lost Friday so far this season, and if you're still lonely, you can follow my Twitter feed at the top of the sidebar all weekend. I'm your buddy; I'd never just up and abandon you like that.

Thanks much.

Season 5 - Episode 1/2 Review.
Season 5 - Episode 4 Review.
Season 5 - Episode 5 Review.
Season 5 - Episode 6 Review.
Season 5 - Episode 7 Review.
Season 5 - Episode 9 Review.
Season 5 - Episode 10 Review.