It was a dark and stormy night

[fbhjr]

Back in 1983, when I was 19, I still drank a lot. It was probably the peak
of my drinking.
There was one weekend in February that my younger brother came to visit me
at college. My friend Alan and I took him to the arcade in downtown
Worcester and spent most of the afternoon playing video games.
Although the middle of winter, it was unusually warm. So, the storm that
came in that afternoon was rain, not snow.
On the way home we were in a car accident. Al’s car slid on a puddle
making a turn. He stopped before he hit the light pole, but a car coming
the other way plowed into us.
By the time all of that was settled it was long past dinner time.
A group of my friends were having a party that night. (The day ended with
a y. That’s all it took back then.) Before we left that afternoon I had
given them money to buy me something to drink at the party.
My brother didn’t want to go, so Al and I went without him, showing up
about 10 at night.
As we walked in, someone handed me a 1 liter bottle of schnapps.
I drank it in about 15 minutes.
I hadn’t eaten anything in more than 10 hours.
I got very drunk, very fast.

Soon after, I felt the need to go to the bathroom. Walking back down the
dorm corridor after using the bathroom, I realized I was having balance
issues.
“I’m going to fall down now,” I said.
I very clearly remember my friend Al running forward to catch me with a
long “Nooooo!” as the floor came up to meet me. I landed on my chin. The
very thin carpet over the cement floor did almost nothing to cushion the
impact.
I bounced once and came to rest.
I could feel that I had broken some of my teeth at once. I spit pieces of
them out at Al.
“I’m going to go home now,” I said, getting back up. “I broke some teeth
and don’t feel like partying.”

What I didn’t know was that I had also split open my chin. As I walked
back across campus to my college apartment, the blood covered the front of
my shirt without my noticing.
The storm had turned into a thunderstorm and was fairly intense as I got
back to my apartment.

I threw open the door and shouted “I’m home!” just as a flash of lightning
lit up the night behind me so my roommates could get a good look at me
covered in blood.
There was much shouting and yelling at that point.
The blood was pointed out, and I agreed that was bad.

My friends took me off to the college infirmary and ultimately called the
campus police to take me to the hospital where my chin got three stiches to
stop the bleeding.

A few days later, my dentist did his best to repair the teeth. Over the
intervening 30 years I’ve had to get those repairs updated about every 10
years. Almost every dentist I’ve had since has assumed the damage comes
from my grinding my teeth at night. All sorts of guards and such have been
proposed to “prevent further damage” to those teeth.
I bring it up because tonight I’ve got a dentist appointment to look at one
of those teeth damaged so long ago.
Hope it goes well.

Comments

[ravena-kade.livejournal.com]

I hope the dentist visit goes well.

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

ugh, me too.

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

wow. that's one hell of a motherfucking story.

O_o!