My eldest son, Jody celebrated his 40th birthday a few days back, and the years are catching up to him. This dear son of mine has always been classified as a . . . well a bit of a character. Thankfully for 40 years he has never let my laughter-pool run dry.
His sixth grade teacher once told me, “When things got a little tense or up-tight in the classroom, you could always count on Jody to ease the tension with some off the wall remark.”
I don’t think that was ever more evident than in his junior year of high school, when a three-wheeler accident almost took his life.
The three-wheeler belonged to younger brother Tim. I must confess that Tim was the one I fully expected to one day have to peel him off a light post. Tim’s favorite thing was to weave in and out of the posts that lined the mile-or-so from our house to the main road.
This particular Saturday, Jody and a friend had gone fishing on the three-wheeler. There’s speculation that two people on the three-wheeler caused the accident. But, I’m convinced had there not been two people on the confounded machine; Jody would have died that Saturday.
Somewhere on the boys’ journey, Jody lost control of the three-wheeler and plowed through a barbed-wire fence. The fence caught Jody at the neck and nearly took his head off. The fencing caught Jody’s throat and cut it from ear to ear, stopping just short of the jugular vein. It took over 300 stitches to put him back together.
Not, that’s the scary part, but for a young many with a weird sense of humor, he had a different take on the event.
The young man riding with Jody was slightly injured and when he realized Jody’s condition, he took out in search of help. His first choice was a house day the way. The house was locked and no one was home. He broke in. But, there was no telephone.
He stole a bicycle. It had a flat. He tossed it aside. He ran to the next nearest house. By the time he could get someone to the door and get an ambulance in route, Jody had come to and was walking toward the house.
Jody said, “When I came to and saw that my white T-shirt was the same color as the red numbers on it, I thought I might be in trouble.”
In the emergency room, Jody looked at the nurse shaving the hair from around the gash behind his ear and said, “While you’re back there could you take a little off the sides?”
After his surgery, the boy was a little upset that all he could have was ice to quench his thirst.
“Why can’t I have a drink of water?” he asked.
“Because, if you drink water now, it might leak out,” I told him.
“You think?” he asked.
I assured him I was only kidding.
Later in the evening, the young man who had been riding on the three-wheeler with him came in for a visit.
The nurses had just brought in some chicken soup for Jody’s supper.
Jody told the young man to watch the bandages around his neck while he was eating the soup and let him know if any thing began to come out.
The boy never took his eyes off Jody’s neck.
Back at school, Jody spoke to his classmates about his accident.
“I really don’t remember much about the accident,” he said. “But, I do know I nearly lost my head over the matter.”
“Jody, you’re a sick-o,” the kids said.
Jody’s weird sense of humor has made me want to smack him on occasions, but on the other hand that same sense of humor has made my corner of the world a lot more interesting.
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