My ‘first’ adventure of self sufficiency
I belong to several social clubs, and am even an officer of one at this writing.
I was typically too early (I caught this from my mother, in reverse) and decided
to walk around the neighborhood to while away (read waste) some time. It was
a nice quiet residential area with a church a block down and the neighborhood
center where I was to meet people later. The architecture varied from Victorian
(the real stuff), to a few modern duplexes, though they all seemed to blend
in quite well.
The Saturday afternoon sun was warm, even for mid July and the patches of
shade I went thru felt very good. Not too many cars went by as I studied the
front porches and little box gardens along my way. Then it happened.
The sidewalk reached up and twisted my ankle on a crack. I fell, scraping
my knee and cutting my hand open a little. (I have had major cuts, this was
very minor.) I sat on the concrete of the sidewalk, a little dazed, and wondered
what I was going to do next.
Oh, I forgot to say that the center was locked tight and I did not have the
keys. That was why I was wandering around in the first place. No one was home
in the neighborhood, or at least they were hiding from the sun sufficiently
that I did not see anyone. And I was early enough that none of my club fellows
were going to be there for quite a while.
So. What to do now? Cope.
First aide kit. I limped back to the minivan and dragged the first aide kit
from under the drivers seat. I was wearing a skirt, so it was easy for me
to get to the scraped knee, though it would have been funny to discard my
pants to get to a scrape in the middle of a parking lot. I started to take
things out of the first aide kit when I actually looked at the wound.
I needed to clean it. No peroxide in the kit. No water- Wait! My gym bag!
I got up again, and to keep me from sitting and standing too much, I thought
out just a little more and took out a bunch of stuff that I leave in the van.
When I sat again, I had poised around me: The First Aide Kit; My Gym Bag,
with Water Bottle; My Back Pack; and a Different Skirt, just in case I had
bled too much on the one I had been wearing. It didn’t dawn on me that
I carry too much stuff around with me until that moment. I was glad that I
did, though.
I dug out of my pack the mini first aide kit, which had in it the peroxide
I wanted, and some soap. I poured a little water from the sports bottle I
keep in my gym bag over both scraped areas to wash out gross bits, and I do
mean big pieces of dirt, not blood. I am a woman- I deal with blood once a
month. Then the peroxide. No matter what anyone tells me, it stings.
I dried the area with the cleaner of the T-shirts in my gym bag, thanking
the deities that it was black, not white. I put a gauze square and band aide
on the cut on my hand and smeared ointment on my knee before I put similar
wrappings on my knee.
The skirt that I was wearing was all right, but it was nice to know that I
had the option to change. The rest of the water in the bottle went to washing
my hands (I should have done that before I did the surgery, but I only play
a Doctor on t.v.). I was putting things away when the first of the club members
drove up.
A little while into the meeting, I had a warm flash about what I had just
done. I had coped, yes. But I had ‘survived’ to the best of my abilities
because I had been prepared, I did not panic, and I had to.