My Broken Nose

All the stress of replacing my beloved car has left me yearning for 1: warmer places - not possible, move on, and 2: old times. So back to yesteryear. In a way, it's also a car story.

We lived in Peachtree City, Georgia from early 1978 to mid 1981. Paul had gotten transferred by virtue of a new job with NCR, or National Cash Register. Still, money was tight, especially after he moved out. One result was that vacations with three little kids were economy affairs, touring and camping in the 1975 Chevy van (3/4, not full). The back of the van was bare walls and floor. We had put in two bench seats to accommodate hauling around day care kids. One seat hugged the wall behind the driver, the other spread across the back end. That left floor space that just fit an adult in a sleeping bag next to the big side door. I think we put a piece of plywood in so the ribbed floor didn't make lying on it impossibly uncomfortable. Richard and Stephanie were small enough that each got one of the benches for a bed. "Junior" - we still called him that until we moved away from his father and there was only one Paul in the family - slept with me on the floor. All the stuff we packed went either back behind the rear bench or on the front seats. Curtains had been installed over the back windows and across the front for privacy, and a crank-up vent in the roof provided ventilation. All we had to do was park and move stuff internally and we were ready for the night.

One of the trips we took in that van was up into Tennessee, over into Kentucky, down through South Carolina and back home. We saw Ruby Falls, the Underground Sea, the Blue Ridge Highway, and a whole lot of scenery. One day we also stopped at a water slide park.

None of us had been to one before, and this looked like great fun. Even more importantly, affordable fun on a hot summer afternoon. Somewhere we got the idea of "training" down the slide, hooking onto each other end to end and going down in a single group. Others were and it looked like fun. We just made one mistake. I hooked up going down head-first.

Now this water slide didn't just ease you into the pool at the bottom. It ended about a foot above the water level. You kerplunked in - hard, dunked under, and then came up somewhere past the slide end. The plan was to leave room for the person behind you to land. It's great in theory, but not if one of the idiots in your train is pointed head-first. I was still coming down as Richard was coming up, and my nose hit the back of his head with an audible crack.

I left the pool so I wouldn't bleed too much in their water, made it back up the hill to the office/store area, and informed the girl selling tickets that I had just broken my nose. I figure she heard "lawsuit" because she started arguing with me that oh no, I couldn't have broken it and it certainly couldn't have happened on their water slide. Meanwhile I'm hurting and still have blood running down my face (hopefully at this point scaring all the potential customers away if that's how she wanted to be about it), and interrupt her to simply ask for some ice, paper towels and some aspirin. That she could handle. I spent my afternoon icing my nose while the kids kept sliding.

No more trains though.

Next morning I have two black eyes and a completely plugged nose, now slightly more crooked than before. A bit of gentle testing proved to me that the nose was also a wee bit more mobile than before, although with a wee grinding noise and more pain the time I tried it. I stopped trying it. What do you do when you break your nose camping? Keep on camping, of course. What's anybody going to do for it at that point? So we finished the trip as scheduled, and by the time we got home I thought it would be safe to try to clear out my nose so I could breathe through it again. For years thereafter I also teased Richard about having such a hard head that he broke my nose.

You'd think the story ends there, but a few years back I was surprised to find it had an aftermath.

I was having a conversation with Rich when he mentioned that his father had broken my nose. What? Where did that come from? I reminded him of the real story, and asked why he'd thought his father had done it. He reminded me of a time back in Georgia, with Richard watching from the living room, the two of us had been on the entryway stairs when one or perhaps both of us had turned suddenly, and my nose and his elbow had collided. Purely accidentally, and painfully for me. Of course I reacted with a loud "Ow", and Paul instantly responded as a normal person would, concerned for my wellbeing. But nothing was broken, and we quickly went back to whatever we had been doing.

Somehow Rich remembered it as a case of domestic abuse. I emphatically put his mind at rest on that score. With all his faults, and whatever else had been going on, Paul had never ever physically abused me.

That's why it took so long for me to leave him. But that's another story.

The water slide accident happened on my very first trip down. I've never taken another. I might like to do that someday. Maybe. But no training!