Sometimes you have to scrounge around for a column. Read the news, some blogs, go out and hope gibbon monkeys escape from the zoo and start a trendy fashion line. And sometimes the column comes to you, which was my case this Sunday. Actually, it came from the head of my buddy Brad, who quite literally slammed it into me during a basketball game. I heard a loud CRACK sound then heard everyone say, “Ohhhhh.” “Are you OK?” I asked Brad. “OK” he said, “But your nose doesn’t look too good.”
Five minutes later I was in a taxi with an ice-bag on my face rushing to the hospital. Three minutes before that I was having the following exchange:
Taxi Driver: Bien doh?
Me: Hospital
Taxi Driver: Bien doh?
Me: DO YOU SEE HOW MY NOSE LOOKS LIKE IT’S DETACHED FROM THE REST OF MY FACE? WHERE DO YOU THINK I WANT TO GO?
Taxi Driver: Bien doh?
Me: [dialing hospital number on my cell phone]
I ran into the hospital ready to see the surgeon, have some impossibly beautiful nurses care for me, and be out once Doctor House stared weirdly into the distance and figured out what crazy syndrome I had contracted. Nope. “Please wait an hour,” the attendant said. I put the ice bag on my nose and tried to sit as far away from the really sick or weird looking people in the waiting room as I could. Unfortunately, I think that was me since with a squashed nose my face was only in two dimensions.
The doctor said that I had probably fractured some bones and the left side of the nose had collapsed. “Do you want me to fix it?” he asked. I stared at him. He stared at me, smiling. “...yes,” I eventually said. “Can you make it look like it was before?” I asked, “I’d really like it to be back to normal.”
“Are you a model?” the doctor asked. “No,” I said. “Well, hopefully we can get it back, but if not it shouldn’t really matter,” he said. I started to feel bad about being conceited but then was like WTF, just fix my nose!
