Story-a-day - Day Thirty One

This post is part of a series of short stories and poems.

Day Thirty One

A True Story

When I was eighteen I got into a car accident. A teenage boy didn’t give me the right-of-way and turned left right in front of me while I went through a green light and I smashed into the back rear side of his car. Thanks to my trusty 1966 Volvo station wagon I was mostly unharmed. A police officer told me later that if it wasn’t for my Volvo I could have died. It was a surreal moment, the traffic light was at the peak of a hill, and as I came up the hill and as the boy turned in front of me, I remember screaming ‘’No! No! No!’’ three times before impact. Then I remember my gum had hard chunks in it. I later realized they were my teeth. I took the gum out and put it on my steering wheel. My friend Josh just happened to drive by and saw my very recognizable car, so he stopped to make sure I was ok. My mom told me to go to the E.R. just to make sure I wasn’t injured. As the doctor did the exam he asked where I worked. ‘’I’m currently unemployed.’’ ‘’What’s your favorite animal?’’ ‘’Dog.’’ ‘’I’ve got seventy of them, do you want a job?’’

And that’s how my one-year career as a dog-musher-helper-slash-nanny-if-you-can-really-call-it-that-when-the-boys-did-their-own-laundry-and-usually-made-their-own-meals began. The truth is, I became a member of a family of mushers and had the privilege of helping them with the dogs and even travelling to Anchorage, Alaska to see their oldest son finish the Iditarod, one of many, many times the family would collectively compete in the longest dog sledding race in the world. And there are plenty of stories to be told about this alone. But that’s not the reason I’m writing today. Today I was reminded of a young man named Mike who was working for this family when I joined them. He was from New York and was a true adrenaline junkie. And at the end of a long day of mushing, he would come to the family kitchen and cook a meal and tell us stories of his adventures. Mushing was one of them for him. He had left New York to get away from it all and found happiness in the quiet little town of Seeley Lake, Montana. And it is one of his wild stories I want to share with you today.

Picture it. Pamplona, Spain. Early 90s. A young man, full of recklessness and a thirst for the ultimate rush decides to take part in the famous Running of the Bulls. He told the story something like this. They released the runners and released the bulls and he was doing pretty good for quite a while. Doing pretty good at not getting trampled or killed. And he rounded a corner and turned to look over one shoulder at one bull that had gotten close and in so doing didn’t notice the other one on the other side of him who put his head down and essentially scooped him up with his horns by the small of his back. He threw Mike, who was wiry and short, probably about 145 pounds, up and over the back of himself. He was gored. He went to the hospital and a nurse was working on stitching him up, but, as he told it, was working too slowly for him so he used what little Spanish he knew to basically say ‘’gimme that!’’ and stitched himself up. Sounds too fantastic to be true, right? I know. But you don’t know Mike. I wouldn’t have believed it either if I didn’t see the huge scar with my own eyes, and hear many other too-fantastic-not-to-be-true stories.