Break a leg!

on falling down as an adult

this is something I wrote for our upcoming book Make It Make Sense which didn’t make the final cut. instead of letting it slip into the abyss of google docs that never get touched again, I thought it would be cute to send it to you 𓆩♡𓆪

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Break a leg!

During my first year of university, I came home on a break and decided I wanted to learn to skateboard.

I didn’t decide this because I wanted to be a skater girl - I’m nowhere near cool enough for that, I decided it because I felt like it had been a long time since I’d tried something new, since I’d fallen down, or since I’d even put myself in the position to. I enlisted my best friend Jake to come and learn with me, seeing as he has always been fearless and competent with anything physical. You’ll cringe, but before we started learning we imagined writing a book about our findings called ‘Just Be Confident’ (with the ‘just’ crossed out, because if you were truly confident you would never put a flimsy word like ‘just’ in front of that statement.) The book would be about being brave, tumbling down, and most importantly, getting back up (in hindsight, it sounds like every other shitty self-help book you see on the shelf and laugh at, but we were 17 and 18 ok?)

Anyway, Jake came over with his brand new penny board and we embarked on gaining the real-world experience we needed to write this book (the part where you get back up, specifically.)

I took him out to the cauldesac where I told him I’d faceplanted a few times, but not to worry because I’d resurrected after each one, and I was sure he would too. After a quick demonstration, I kicked the board his way, and he tried to jump on it while it was moving. I say tried, because just as it reached him and he jumped onto it, he somehow slipped.

“This is the moment,” I thought.

“He’s been too confident, he’s fallen down, and now it’s his chance to get back up and prove to himself that it was all okay.”

Except, he didn’t. 

Jake’s not the kind of person who ever makes a fuss, so when his face went pale and he started groaning and pulling his shin up towards his stomach I did the only thing I could think of at that moment: I ran inside and grabbed him a bag of frozen peas to put on his leg.

Unsurprisingly, the peas didn’t help, so we hoisted him up into his little Toyota Corolla (stick shift) and I took him on the bumpiest journey of his life to his parent’s house. When we got there, his Mum took one look at us and told me to get him to the hospital straight away - she’d join us after she’d put her ‘face on.’

After a punishing wait in the emergency room with nothing but Panadol to get Jake by, the doctor told us that he had sustained a spiral fracture in his shin, which meant his leg was broken in multiple places. He had surgery, was put in a cast up to his thigh for two weeks, had his leg re-broken, and was then put back in the cast for another eight weeks.

Those ten weeks weren’t all bad. I got really good at pushing a wheelchair and administering pain medication. I also got really good at saying “Sorry - I know this was kinda my fault!” He didn’t let me take the blame, nor did he let the situation get him down - it would take far more than a broken leg to do that. He still went to his school dance looking dapper as ever with vintage wooden crutches, turned 18 in classic Jake style, and went on his first ever nights out in town (one of which he planted a sloppy kiss on my best friend who was not into it, sorry Jake.)

When he eventually recovered and his wheelchair, crutches, and penny board had all been returned, we laughed that even though we wouldn’t be writing a book, we’d learnt a valuable lesson in all of this: sometimes when you fall down it will take you 10 weeks to get back up. But you will.

That, and being confident can do a lot for you, but it cannot not mend a broken bone. 

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