2002-08-20 - 11:20 p.m.

This would have been posted a while ago, but I was having major problems with my old computer, then major problems with my new computer. Now that I have a replacement new computer, I believe all of my problems have been resolved, so you get a diary update.

A lot of things will go through your head if you ever find yourself laying on the floor of a dormitory bathroom, naked, covered by a slimy shower curtain with a bruised head and a foot throbbing in pain. If you’re anything like me, the first thing that will come into your head is a feeling of pure joy that the door is locked, so no one can come in and see you like that.

When this happened to me, the next thought I had was a horrible realization that if I’d been seriously injured and knocked unconscious, no one would have thought to come looking for me for a long time.

Next came the damage report. Head: bruised, but not seriously damaged. Not bleeding, and I wasn’t going to pass out. Body, legs, arms, hands, neck: unharmed except a few small bruises. Shower curtain: Intact, but slimy. People really needed to start cleaning that thing more often. Left foot: unhurt. Right foot: Scraped, apparently bruised.

Apparently bruised. That’s all I thought at first. Though there was a steadily increasing pain in that foot I was still thinking it was just a bruise. In the shadow of the shower wall (my feet and legs were still in the shower, though the rest of me was outside it) it didn’t look too bad. It looked like I’d just scraped it on the shower wall as I fell. As if trying to prove that the pain in my foot was just superficial bruising, I bent all of my toes at once. As soon as I did, a horrible, sharp, electric pain shot from my toes up my entire leg, leaving me reeling in pain, pounding my fist against the floor, and biting my lip to keep from screaming.

Coming to the realization that I’d just broken my toe in the *shower,* I had to wonder, “How am I going to explain this?” It would be one thing if I could just say I’d slipped and fallen. That’s common. There’s little humiliation in that. Unfortunately, there was one thing that was going to be hard to explain in that story.

Next to my head, lay the shower curtain rod, bent in half like a prop in a carnival act starring a big man in a leopard-skin toga. That was going to be hard to explain, and even harder to pay for with my very small income.

That’s when I came up with the story. It’s the story I’ve been telling for years. The one that could easily explain how I’d managed to break my toe in the shower without it seeming like it was my fault, so I wouldn’t have to pay for it, monetarily or socially. Most importantly I was hoping to alleviate some of the mocking from my friends that I was sure was destined to come no matter what my reasons. The story was, basically, that I’d slipped on a wet floor and fallen. I caught myself on the curtain rod, but instead of steadying me, it bent in half, broke off at both ends, and that’s when I totally lost my footing and fell, breaking my toe. Except for right now, I’ve always told the story in exactly the same way, with the same hand gestures (except when I’m telling the story to people online or on the phone, of course). Only once in that time have I ever told anyone the truth, and I don’t even remember who that person was. And other than that day, I’ve never told it any differently than I did that first day. I seldom tell the story to the same person more than once, so they don’t notice the fact that it’s totally unwavering, and that there are a few small, but very important holes in my story.

Anyway, the truth about how I broke my toe in the shower is slightly different. I did not slip on a wet floor. At the time I wat taking only afternoon classes Tuesday and Thursday, which was an uncommon luxury at my high school. So when I got up to take a shower that day, the shower floor was dry, everyone else having taken there shower long before me. My broken toe was an indirect result of the fact that I was quite the weakling back then. Not that I’m all that strong now, but I’m much stronger than I was three years ago. I’d been going to the school weight room to try to change that, but there was one thing I couldn’t do. I couldn’t do pull-ups on the pull-up apparatus they had there. It was too high, and I just couldn’t pull myself the whole way up. Not only was it rather embarrassing, it was also frustrating because if you can’t do one, it’s hard to get to the point that you can do two, or three, or ten. So I took to doing them, off and on, on the shower curtain rods. They were lower, and I could make it up that high, and was getting stronger and better at it so I would soon be able to do a few on the higher apparatus in the weight room and stop on the shower curtain rods.

Never before had any of them even begun to bend, let alone go far enough that I would have even started to suspect that it might break. Then, that memorable morning, I’d only made it halfway up once when the bar buckled in the middle, snapped off at both ends, and dropped. I landed with the arch of my right foot hitting the lip of the shower. That must have triggered some weird reflex mechanism, because that foot--the only thing giving me a chance of coming out of this ordeal without ending up on my ass--jerked up in the air, kicking forward and dropping me back. My foot slammed into the shower wall, my head bounced off the tile wall, and I fell to the floor.

After making sure I was generally all right, and making up a story about how it happened-albeit, a story that actually didn’t quite hold water if you examined it closely (as high as it was, if I managed to catch that curtain rod as I was slipping and falling, I wouldn’t have been moving fast enough to rip it off the wall)-I pulled the shower curtain off me and limped to my clothes. I pulled on my pants and tried to walk to my room, which was just next to the room right across the hall. I only made it halfway there before the shooting pain in my foot made me drop to the floor and crawl the rest of the way to my door. It took a few tries to get my key card in the door from that position, but I got it in, and my door open, and from the doorway, still on my hands and knees, I calmly asked my roommate Dan to go get the RAs, because I’d just broken my toe.

I crawled into bed and waited... and waited... and waited. Finally, after much longer than I thought it should have taken to get an RA to walk down the hall to check on an injured student, two showed up, and asked me which one was broken. I gestured to my right foot and said, “the one that’s blue,” thinking that would be enough to narrow it down. But they kept looking back and forth, left and right, asking again, “Which one?”

It wasn’t until after I got back from the hospital that I knew why they kept asking that. Apparently, when Dan went to the RA desk to get some help, the guy working there was on the phone with a friend, talking about a basketball game they’d played the day before. When Dan told him I’d broken my toe, he said he’d be there as soon as he was off the phone. Dan tried to urge him along by changing his story to saying that I’d broken my foot. Still little response, until Dan said that there was “blood everywhere!” Then he got off the phone, and got someone to come with him to help. So when they came in, they were looking for a broken foot, and expected it to be a bit more obvious which one was injured.

And so, after verifying that my toe was almost definitely broken, I was sent to the hospital, telling the same half-truth to everyone who asked. Telling them of a wet floor that sent me crashing down. Though, if anyone had actually taken a second to check the floor, they’d have seen that it was perfectly dry. I was given a hard-soled shoe and some crutches to get around without putting weight on it. That weekend I found myself directing a Film Club movie from a wheelchair (not that I needed one to get around, it was just faster and more convenient than crutches for maneuvering around that office.

I’ve only ever confessed the truth to one other person before this came up, and I’ll probably never remember who that person was. I just never felt I could tell the truth to my friends when it happened. Despite what my friends may have claimed, or even believed, I was not an equal. I was the target. I was often the walking joke. The last thing I needed to do was give them more ammunition. I’d already broken my toe in the shower. I knew I was going to get enough flak from that. I didn’t need to let them know it was actually my own stupid mistake that caused it. But now, I think I’m finally ready to tell them the truth.