My Brother
The story that I'm about to tell happened during the school holidays when I was about 10 yrs old. It was only years later that I realised the full extent of my brothers injuries and how serious the accident really was.

So lets set the scene. It was day two of our marathon summer holidays. You know the ones that seem to last forever and every day takes an eternity to finish. I grew up in South Africa so the days were always hot and balmy and we'd spend endless hours swimming, skateboarding and generally running around like headless chickens. A lot of our time was also spent defeating our evil overlords (our grumpy neighbour up the road) and evading capture by cretinous villians who would hold us captive (mum & dad trying to make us go to bed).

The day in question was particularly hot with a perfect sky and a lazy wind from the east. Only the slightest whisper of white cloud was visible which made it feel like you were looking at the worlds best and biggest impressionist painting. Following our morning swim and customary spat with my younger sister we decided to burn up some calories by going skateboarding. We had no particular skills in this area other that going as fast as we possibly could down the hill on which we lived. A friend of ours was over that weekend and after a short debate it was decided that he would go tandem with my brother on the skateboard. Well, I say debate, but it was more like they just pushed me into a bush and went off down the hill together laughing. Anyway I digress...

Skateboarding continued for much of the afternoon with occasional stops for sweets and more goading of my younger sister. We climbed the hill once again and my brother and Michael set off as usual, my brother sitting while Michael stood on the back holding his shoulders. We lived in a complex of about 150 houses and the road twisted and turned for a good few hundred yards downwards. They carved their way round corners with consummate ease - until the very last corner that is. They went round the corner on the wrong side of the road and just as they rounded it a car was coming full on at them. Michael managed to escape and landed in some bushed, but my brother wasn't so lucky.

His face connected the bumper with enough combined velocity to rip it clean off. Now a bumper is not the easiest thing to remove at the best of times, but my brother had managed to do so with his head in 0.5 seconds. The car continued in its trajectory as the brakes were called into action and the car screeched to a halt. By this time my brother was lying under the car and had been dragged a number of yards up the road on his back. As you can imagine this obviously didn't do much for the skin on his back.

I think it's fair to say that he suffered a fair bit from his accident. He fractured his skull, burst an ear drum, scrapped a hell of a lot skin off his back, broke an ankle and sprained the other one. While he was in the recovery phase we were sharing a room at home and it was quite upsetting to have to wake up
next to someone who's ear just leached a load of blood onto his pillow. Even worse than that was the skin taken off his back which meant that every morning for about 2 weeks my mom would come in and quite literally peel the sheet off his back which had stuck to his open wound. Then she would put some antiseptic liquid that would make him howl like a man possessed. I don't think I'll ever forget him screaming.

Still, there was a positive side to this all. We got shit hot at popping wheelies in his wheelchair and the timed obstacle course we set up for it in the garden. It's also rather important to note that my mom was driving the car that almost killed him. She said she only realised it was him after she had reversed the car off him. That must have been a shock.

Length: about 1 min 35s which included a wheelie across the course finish line.
(The Archduke of South London I'm in your Girlfriend eating her organs, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 16:31, Reply)