As if everyone is asking about the gerbil. The gerbil? What about me? What about my near death experience? Don't we care about me?
Well I had to ask, even if I knew what the answer would be.
I'll have to embarrass myself now and tell the whole , disturbing tale. Then I'll need to eat half a tray of Rice Krispies Squares in order to deal with the recreation of my traumatic event.
Once upon a time, when I was thirteen and the world was still filled with large ferns and prehistoric creatures, I had a gerbil. I didn't have a lot of friends, so I used to buy friends at the pet store. The nice thing about animals is that they have to be your friend because otherwise you can stop feeding them and they'll die. I learned this early on. It's an important coping mechanism for loser kids.
I did have one childhood friend that we'll call Bad Idea. We'll call her that because she was generally full of, well, bad ideas. While she technically lived with her parents, she was mostly raised by her grandparents a few doors down from our house. Since I was the shy little loser kid and she was the more bossy neglected fat kid, we made fast friends. We spent every moment of every non-school day together.
One day Bad Idea was given a rat. She loved the ugly little thing and used to carry it nestled just under her hairline on the back of her neck. Nobody even knew the darn thing was there! She could bring it on the bus, to school, to her grandparents' place without them knowing... It was great. It was cool. Bad Idea was my new hero and I needed to be just like her. She thought it would be great if I got a rat, too.
Except my mother didn't enjoy rodents very much and I had to win her over with something cuter than a rat with giant testicles (ever seen male rats? If human guys had balls like that they'd have constant rugburn from dragging on the ground, I swear). I thought of getting a hampster, but I already had a phobia of them. Another friend of mine had one and it had bitten me twice in a single day not too long before. Nope. Hampsters were out.
So I bought a gerbil. A grey one. And I brought it home and gently introduced my mother to my new friend by having it crawl out of my sleeve and onto the diningroom table while she was on the phone. You know, easing her into it. She screamed a little, but eventually settled down enough to order the thing up to my room and into a proper cage.
I called him Lad. Why? Because I had a crush on a boy at school who had never so much glanced in my direction. He was a rocker. A headbanger. He had hair much prettier than mine and tassles on his leather jacket. He was way too cool to talk to me, even when I wore my most ripped Slaughter t-shirt. Naturally he wanted to have my babies, and since I was only thirteen I figured the next best thing would be to name a gerbil after him.
Lad and I became fast friends (the hairy one who didn't talk. Oh, wait... I mean the gerbil.) I would prod him with my finger to wake him up when I got home from school and he would only snap at me if he was particularly moody that day. I would tell him all about the other Lad and how Slayer Shirt Bitch gave him a hug right in the middle of the cafeteria and he soooo obviously didn't like it, but he put up with it anyway because she was popular and gave him cigarettes. Gerbil Lad would look at me with his adorable beady black eyes and gnaw things. He understood me. He listened to me. He was the perfect man. It was a wonderful relationship.
One weekend my mom planned a trip to Montreal with some friends. It was her first vacation away in years. She left behind yours truly, a five-year-old, a three-year-old and a sickly one-year-old. My dad was doing a great job, but he had his hands full. That's why he didn't seem to mind when I asked him for money to go for lunch at the restaurant up the road on the highway.
See, Bad Idea had come over to see if I wanted to take our pets out to eat. She had Meat Head the rat tucked in his usual, testicle-resting spot behind her neck. I had never taken Lad out of the house before, but I thought he and I could use some fresh air. Besides, Bad Idea was doing it and I had to look cool to my one and only human friend. So, I stuffed a small sock in the breast pocket of my awesome, acid-wash jean jacket ($80, purchased by grandparents after I begged them for it) and stuffed Lad in there before zipping up the pocket most of the way.
We trekked off to the restaurant and had some italian food with our rodents. Meat Head discreetly ate a bit of pasta while Lad glared at me every time I checked on him in my pocket.
Afterwards we realized we still had a few dollars left, so Bad Idea thought we should walk up the highway about two blocks to the store. Good idea, Bad Idea! So off we walked along the four lane highway with no sidewalk and headed into the General Store (yes, real name).
Once inside I checked on Lad, only to find a sock in an empty pocket.
Panic.
I ran outside with tears in my eyes, fearing the worst. And then I saw it: a tiny fluff of fur in the middle of the road.
I didn't even think. I had to make sure my future boyfriend's namesake was still alive! It was 3pm on a Sunday so traffic was fairly light. I glanced both ways and dashed onto the highway with the blind gusto that only a hormonally-charged teenager can muster.
When I got close enough I realized that the ball of fluff was actually a cowering gerbil. I breathed a sigh of relief and made to scoop him up.
The little cutie ran further into the road.
I checked traffic again and followed.
The darling shnookums zipped onto the double yellow line.
Checked again. Cautiously made my way into the middle of the road.
The sweety munchkin jumped at least two feet in the air, over my grasping hands and ran back toward the side of the road we were initially on. I ran, too.
Right onto the hood of a Toyota Camry.
I don't remember a lot. I remember saying 'OOF!!' as I was hit. I don't recall my face hitting the windshield (Go ahead and say it: 'Oh! So that's what happened!' har dee har. Never heard that one before.) I don't recall flying up over the roof or rolling off the side. I don't recall having my feet run over by the back tires.
I woke up rolling over and over in the road. I landed on my stomach with my arm bent in a very scary position behind me.
I remember Bad Idea screaming and asking me if I was going to die. I remember calmly saying to her 'No, I'm not going to die but this REALLY hurts. Can you... NO. I'm NOT DYING. Can you call an a... Listen to me. No dying going on right now. Please call an ambulance, ok?'
'Well, we're right in front of the vet's office. Maybe they can help you,' came Bad Idea's thought.
At this point I'm wondering if Bad Idea had mistaken me for a puppy in all our years of friendship. I reminded her that vets are animal doctors. And speaking of which, where was my gerbil?
Why, after I took the hood of a car for him, he ran beneath Bad Ideas legs and hid. At that point he had no problems with her bending down, scooping him up and putting him in her purse.
And I thought we were friends, Lad. I thought we had something special.
The rest of my day was spent getting peeled off the highway by paramedics, having my favourite acid-wash jean jacket cut off along with the rest of my clothing, taken for a very painful ride in an ambulance (I've had the pleasure of two such rides in my lifetime) to the local children's hospital where I was x-rayed enough times to act as someone's personal nightlight for the rest of my life.
I ended up with an arm broken in two places (I still have a scar where the bone pierced through my skin), a fractured hip that I insisted was broken but wasn't believed until two or three weeks later when my parents finally brought me in for more x-rays (and I had been doing my paper route with my casts on from a few days after the accident, limping in pain the entire time), two very shattered front teeth, and ankles that were so badly sprained and burned that I required a walking cast on one of them and crutches to get around for the first few days.
My dad made it to the accident scene while I was still there and followed us to the hospital. My mother was put into a shower by her friends because she was in complete shock and had to cut her visit to Montreal short to make sure her firstborn wasn't dying (and now you know why I have three gremlins to make my life a whirlwind of chaos; just look at what I put my poor mother through on her first weekend away). Bad Idea came to the hospital for a while, too, with Meat Head still resting peacefully out of sight on her neck.
And what about the gerbil? I was released from the hospital several hours after the accident and found Lad scurrying around in an empty beer case in my dad's car.
Obviously he felt badly about the incident, because he just ignored me like he usually does instead of showing the endless gratitude that I'm sure was overflowing within him. I told him that it was ok and that I forgave him and he chewed on some cardboard.
Four months later, right after the final cast came off on my arm, when the initial root canals and crowns were completed in my mouth and when the burns on my ankles were starting to look less hideous, I went downstairs to say hello to Lad. Except Lad wasn't looking so great. In fact, he sounded a bit raspy and was lying on his side in a not-very-good position.
'Oh, no you don't. Don't you die on me, you stupid gerbil. Not after all that. I saved you, damnit! I saved your sorry ass!' I yelled at him.
A lot of good it did. He was dead less than 24 hours later. I cried as I buried him.
After my ordeal, I realized that Human Lad and Slayer Shirt Bitch seemed to be hugging each other a lot more lately and were wearing matching concert apparel. This did not bode well for my future with the boy. So, I decided that the name Lad would make a wonderful acronym: Life After Death. Which pretty much summed up my experience as the rescuer of things that didn't necessarily want to be rescued and did a pretty good job of taking care of themselves after I slammed into a car.
In short, I gave Lad four more months of life, which is a fair bit in gerbil years, I suppose. And he gave me a very original story to tell and enough brain damage to want to tell it.
Well I had to ask, even if I knew what the answer would be.
I'll have to embarrass myself now and tell the whole , disturbing tale. Then I'll need to eat half a tray of Rice Krispies Squares in order to deal with the recreation of my traumatic event.
Once upon a time, when I was thirteen and the world was still filled with large ferns and prehistoric creatures, I had a gerbil. I didn't have a lot of friends, so I used to buy friends at the pet store. The nice thing about animals is that they have to be your friend because otherwise you can stop feeding them and they'll die. I learned this early on. It's an important coping mechanism for loser kids.
I did have one childhood friend that we'll call Bad Idea. We'll call her that because she was generally full of, well, bad ideas. While she technically lived with her parents, she was mostly raised by her grandparents a few doors down from our house. Since I was the shy little loser kid and she was the more bossy neglected fat kid, we made fast friends. We spent every moment of every non-school day together.
One day Bad Idea was given a rat. She loved the ugly little thing and used to carry it nestled just under her hairline on the back of her neck. Nobody even knew the darn thing was there! She could bring it on the bus, to school, to her grandparents' place without them knowing... It was great. It was cool. Bad Idea was my new hero and I needed to be just like her. She thought it would be great if I got a rat, too.
Except my mother didn't enjoy rodents very much and I had to win her over with something cuter than a rat with giant testicles (ever seen male rats? If human guys had balls like that they'd have constant rugburn from dragging on the ground, I swear). I thought of getting a hampster, but I already had a phobia of them. Another friend of mine had one and it had bitten me twice in a single day not too long before. Nope. Hampsters were out.
So I bought a gerbil. A grey one. And I brought it home and gently introduced my mother to my new friend by having it crawl out of my sleeve and onto the diningroom table while she was on the phone. You know, easing her into it. She screamed a little, but eventually settled down enough to order the thing up to my room and into a proper cage.
I called him Lad. Why? Because I had a crush on a boy at school who had never so much glanced in my direction. He was a rocker. A headbanger. He had hair much prettier than mine and tassles on his leather jacket. He was way too cool to talk to me, even when I wore my most ripped Slaughter t-shirt. Naturally he wanted to have my babies, and since I was only thirteen I figured the next best thing would be to name a gerbil after him.
Lad and I became fast friends (the hairy one who didn't talk. Oh, wait... I mean the gerbil.) I would prod him with my finger to wake him up when I got home from school and he would only snap at me if he was particularly moody that day. I would tell him all about the other Lad and how Slayer Shirt Bitch gave him a hug right in the middle of the cafeteria and he soooo obviously didn't like it, but he put up with it anyway because she was popular and gave him cigarettes. Gerbil Lad would look at me with his adorable beady black eyes and gnaw things. He understood me. He listened to me. He was the perfect man. It was a wonderful relationship.
One weekend my mom planned a trip to Montreal with some friends. It was her first vacation away in years. She left behind yours truly, a five-year-old, a three-year-old and a sickly one-year-old. My dad was doing a great job, but he had his hands full. That's why he didn't seem to mind when I asked him for money to go for lunch at the restaurant up the road on the highway.
See, Bad Idea had come over to see if I wanted to take our pets out to eat. She had Meat Head the rat tucked in his usual, testicle-resting spot behind her neck. I had never taken Lad out of the house before, but I thought he and I could use some fresh air. Besides, Bad Idea was doing it and I had to look cool to my one and only human friend. So, I stuffed a small sock in the breast pocket of my awesome, acid-wash jean jacket ($80, purchased by grandparents after I begged them for it) and stuffed Lad in there before zipping up the pocket most of the way.
We trekked off to the restaurant and had some italian food with our rodents. Meat Head discreetly ate a bit of pasta while Lad glared at me every time I checked on him in my pocket.
Afterwards we realized we still had a few dollars left, so Bad Idea thought we should walk up the highway about two blocks to the store. Good idea, Bad Idea! So off we walked along the four lane highway with no sidewalk and headed into the General Store (yes, real name).
Once inside I checked on Lad, only to find a sock in an empty pocket.
Panic.
I ran outside with tears in my eyes, fearing the worst. And then I saw it: a tiny fluff of fur in the middle of the road.
I didn't even think. I had to make sure my future boyfriend's namesake was still alive! It was 3pm on a Sunday so traffic was fairly light. I glanced both ways and dashed onto the highway with the blind gusto that only a hormonally-charged teenager can muster.
When I got close enough I realized that the ball of fluff was actually a cowering gerbil. I breathed a sigh of relief and made to scoop him up.
The little cutie ran further into the road.
I checked traffic again and followed.
The darling shnookums zipped onto the double yellow line.
Checked again. Cautiously made my way into the middle of the road.
The sweety munchkin jumped at least two feet in the air, over my grasping hands and ran back toward the side of the road we were initially on. I ran, too.
Right onto the hood of a Toyota Camry.
I don't remember a lot. I remember saying 'OOF!!' as I was hit. I don't recall my face hitting the windshield (Go ahead and say it: 'Oh! So that's what happened!' har dee har. Never heard that one before.) I don't recall flying up over the roof or rolling off the side. I don't recall having my feet run over by the back tires.
I woke up rolling over and over in the road. I landed on my stomach with my arm bent in a very scary position behind me.
I remember Bad Idea screaming and asking me if I was going to die. I remember calmly saying to her 'No, I'm not going to die but this REALLY hurts. Can you... NO. I'm NOT DYING. Can you call an a... Listen to me. No dying going on right now. Please call an ambulance, ok?'
'Well, we're right in front of the vet's office. Maybe they can help you,' came Bad Idea's thought.
At this point I'm wondering if Bad Idea had mistaken me for a puppy in all our years of friendship. I reminded her that vets are animal doctors. And speaking of which, where was my gerbil?
Why, after I took the hood of a car for him, he ran beneath Bad Ideas legs and hid. At that point he had no problems with her bending down, scooping him up and putting him in her purse.
And I thought we were friends, Lad. I thought we had something special.
The rest of my day was spent getting peeled off the highway by paramedics, having my favourite acid-wash jean jacket cut off along with the rest of my clothing, taken for a very painful ride in an ambulance (I've had the pleasure of two such rides in my lifetime) to the local children's hospital where I was x-rayed enough times to act as someone's personal nightlight for the rest of my life.
I ended up with an arm broken in two places (I still have a scar where the bone pierced through my skin), a fractured hip that I insisted was broken but wasn't believed until two or three weeks later when my parents finally brought me in for more x-rays (and I had been doing my paper route with my casts on from a few days after the accident, limping in pain the entire time), two very shattered front teeth, and ankles that were so badly sprained and burned that I required a walking cast on one of them and crutches to get around for the first few days.
My dad made it to the accident scene while I was still there and followed us to the hospital. My mother was put into a shower by her friends because she was in complete shock and had to cut her visit to Montreal short to make sure her firstborn wasn't dying (and now you know why I have three gremlins to make my life a whirlwind of chaos; just look at what I put my poor mother through on her first weekend away). Bad Idea came to the hospital for a while, too, with Meat Head still resting peacefully out of sight on her neck.
And what about the gerbil? I was released from the hospital several hours after the accident and found Lad scurrying around in an empty beer case in my dad's car.
Obviously he felt badly about the incident, because he just ignored me like he usually does instead of showing the endless gratitude that I'm sure was overflowing within him. I told him that it was ok and that I forgave him and he chewed on some cardboard.
Four months later, right after the final cast came off on my arm, when the initial root canals and crowns were completed in my mouth and when the burns on my ankles were starting to look less hideous, I went downstairs to say hello to Lad. Except Lad wasn't looking so great. In fact, he sounded a bit raspy and was lying on his side in a not-very-good position.
'Oh, no you don't. Don't you die on me, you stupid gerbil. Not after all that. I saved you, damnit! I saved your sorry ass!' I yelled at him.
A lot of good it did. He was dead less than 24 hours later. I cried as I buried him.
After my ordeal, I realized that Human Lad and Slayer Shirt Bitch seemed to be hugging each other a lot more lately and were wearing matching concert apparel. This did not bode well for my future with the boy. So, I decided that the name Lad would make a wonderful acronym: Life After Death. Which pretty much summed up my experience as the rescuer of things that didn't necessarily want to be rescued and did a pretty good job of taking care of themselves after I slammed into a car.
In short, I gave Lad four more months of life, which is a fair bit in gerbil years, I suppose. And he gave me a very original story to tell and enough brain damage to want to tell it.
