Police Report

June 24, 2009

One of the first things people ask me after they hear about my accident is, "Are you going to keep riding?" All I can say is that there is nothing in the world that makes me want to ride more than not being able to ride.

Vintage Triumphs are notorious for shaking loose their hardware. I've personally left quite a trail of assorted bits — some of them pretty expensive to replace, too. Even the things that were cheap often cost a lot of time and effort to find. In any case, I can't help thinking that the way my luck has been running lately, my foot screw will work loose on my very first post-accident ride. I picture some helpful citizen flagging me down at a light, "Excuse me, sir, you lost this at the last intersection."

Let's hope not. I mean, it's not like I can just squirt a few drops of Loctite on it and screw it back in.

It's ridiculous, I know, but not unheard of. I spoke to my friend Joe today, and he told me about a retired football quarterback who had the same break as me> Over the course of a few games, the screw in his foot worked loose, rubbing through his skin from the inside out.

I finally got the accident report from the police. One of the cops on the scene handed me a slip of paper while I was in the ambulance and said, "Call the precinct on Monday." Having never dealt with the police for an accident report before, I naively thought the report would be ready when I called. But when Monday came, I spoke to a guy who gave me a second number, which connected me to a woman who said, "Call back Wednesday."

I did.

"No, it ain't ready yet. Call back on Friday."

I called.

"The guy who do it ain't in today, try on Monday."

Monday came:

"No, suh, it ain't ready."

And so it went for two and a half weeks. Finally, when I called this afternoon, the same woman I've been talking to every other day picked up the phone. "Ohhh yeahhh, it ready," she said, easy-breezy, as if it had been ready for weeks. "You can pick it up Monday through Friday, between ten and two."

It was already one o'clock, but I was determined not to wait.

It was the first time I ventured out on my crutches without Deborah to open doors for me or spot me on stairs. I inelegantly head-butted our apartment's main entrance (two sets of doors, in fact) and then awkwardly held them with my crutches, squeezed through, and walked to a waiting car. When the driver dropped me off in front of the police precinct, I looked up at the front stairs and sighed. Took a deep breath and started hopping.

The cops charge ten dollars for a photocopy of the report, and it has to be paid for with a money order. Thankfully, I'd been warned by the EMT driver the day of my accident, or I would've been unprepared. As it was, I traded a money order for a photocopy and headed out the door. I called a car service and was told the standard, "Five minutes." They say five minutes, no matter what. Sometimes it takes five seconds, and other times it takes forever, but they always say five minutes. I guess it's just easier that way.

Since I can't put any weight on my foot, standing around can be exhausting. My right leg started to burn, and my shoulders ached. After ten minutes of waiting, I called again. "Hold on," said the dispatcher, "Lemme see." The dispatcher put me on hold for a moment and came back to say, "The driver said she picked you up already."

"Well, she might've picked someone up, but it wasn't me." Some thoughtless Greenpoint hipster must've snagged my ride.

"Okay, we'll send another car."

I was careful not to blink this time.

When I got home, I looked over the accident report. It said more or less what I expected it to say. I called my insurance company and spoke to my claims agent, then I called the other driver’s insurance company and spoke to someone there. I told the story to each of them, gave them all the details, and was told they'd be in touch. An agent called back immediately about my motorcycle repairs, and then another agent called about my human body repairs.

When I finished with the insurance agents (at least for now), my curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to Google the other driver -- a sixty-one-year-old guy from Queens. I typed in the guy's name and address and it turns out he owns a funeral parlor.

It gave me the creeps thinking he might've been out that day trolling for customers.

Deborah and I went to see Star Trek the other night. "Theater seven, fifth floor," said the ticket taker. Getting on the escalator was relatively easy, and it didn't even occur until halfway to the second floor that getting off might be a problem. I rode it to the top (as if there was a choice), my mind reaching for a dismount scenario that didn't involve me landing flat on my face. I ran out of the escalator before I knew it and leapt off, hopping, hop, hopping, hopping until I finally gained my balance.

"What do you say we find an elevator?"

Inside the theater, there were two wide open seats on the floor in front of a steep bank of balcony seating. We took the easy seats, but Deborah wasn't content. "Can you make it up there?" she said.

"Umm—okay, let's do it."

I breathlessly hopped up a few rows. "How's this?"

"Perfect."

"Whew."

"It's good for you," she said.

As soon as we were settled, a guy rolled in on an electric wheelchair, accompanied by a woman I took to be his wife. I assumed they'd take the seats we left behind — or at least the woman would, while the guy parked his chair in the clearing next to them. But no, the guy rolled his chair to the base of the stairs, climbed out, and proceeded to work his way up the stairs, grabbing the railing and using his well-developed arms to pull his weight up while struggling to follow with his uncooperative legs. (His legs worked to some extent, but not the way he probably would've preferred them to.) He made it to the row below us and settled into a seat. His wife, having found a place for the wheelchair, followed shortly behind. She looked at my cast, smiled, and nodded at me, and I smiled and nodded back.

After the movie, the guy was excited. He loved the movie and was singing the Star Trek theme loud and proud. Not humming the theme, not whistling the theme, but singing it.

He and his wife, and Deborah and I, waited for the crowd to thin out before fumbling down the stairs. Then we all shared the elevator to the first floor. The guy's singing had settled into a hum, as he rocked back and forth in his chair, hardly containing himself.

"It was good, wasn't it?" I said.

"Yes, yes, YES!" he said.

"He only gets to the movies once or twice a year, so he would've loved it no matter what it was," said the wife.

The guy stopped and thought for a moment, and shrugged, then nodded his head in agreement. "That's true."

As we walked through our apartment door, Deborah asked me what I thought of the movie for the seventh time. "It was good," I said. "But my fucking foot feels like hell." It was swollen and tight in the Aircast.

"What's this?" said Deborah. There was a flyer slipped under our apartment door. She kicked it and then picked it up.

I plopped onto the bed and undid the velcro straps on my cast, then eased out my greenish-purple foot. It looked like it belonged to Violet fucking Beauregarde.

Deborah handed me the flyer. It was a bad color printout featuring a photo of a relatively short, muscular guy with sweaty hair hanging in his sweaty face. He was leaning forward, one arm facing toward the floor, and the other pointing to the ceiling while he balanced on his left foot. "Free Summer Yoga Instruction on the Roof," it said.

"Bah! I've gotten pretty good at balancing on one foot," I said. "I think I can skip the lessons. Besides, free or not, I don't do Yoga. Especially not with some spiritual new age player. Did you see the dude's email address? Hot_Yoga_Dude." I took one last jealous look at the photo — ignoring his pasty, sweaty skin and marveling at the precision and control he had while balancing on his strong, fully functional foot — and handed the flyer back to Deborah. "But that's just me," I said. "You can do it if you want."

Deborah held the flyer delicately between her thumb and forefinger as though the flyer itself was soaked with the guy's sweat, curling her nose as if she could smell it, carried it to the kitchen, and dropped it in the garbage.

"Eww," she said. “No.”