Awww, Mem'ries (Part 3)

When we arrived back at the house, I finally got to have my Diet Coke and chicken salad sandwich after 2 hours. Cindy was still upset, so I did my best to comfort her even though I was the one in the cast. Tracy (my other friend who taught with us at school) came over and spent the night because I was leaving early the next morning. The three of us had been through so much together during our time in Costa Rica that it seemed fitting that we should stay together till the end. We ordered pizza and watched Survivor with Spanish subtitles at the bottom of the screen.

The next morning I said my goodbyes, and Monica drove me to the airport. They had a wheelchair waiting for me. My pain pills were strapped to a pouch hanging around my neck. No questions were asked. No lines. No full-body searches. I got to be at the front of the line on each flight. They couldn’t seat me in first class, but they gave me the seat right behind there because it has slightly more leg room. I grabbed on to the first class armchair rests nearest the aisles and swung my way back to my seat. The flight from Costa Rica to Houston was not ideal. I was in the middle seat, between two very large beautiful black women. When they asked for seatbelt extenders, I knew I was in trouble. I used my backpack to prop my leg up, took a deep breath, and prayed that the 4 hour flight would only take 2 hours instead.


The flight from Houston to Oklahoma City was not too shabby. Everyone was very nice. The man who sat beside me asked what happened. He was a former NFL player, with a few bricks shy… So I told him I was surfing in the ocean when I noticed a drowning child in the water. As I got to the child, a shark swam up so I paddled as hard as I could. We got away, but not before a huge tsunami wave knocked us off the board, and I slammed my knee against the coral reef while still protecting the kid. Yeah, that was my story. The poor guy actually believed me. That was priceless.

My parents met me at the airport. All I wanted was to eat at Chili’s and have unlimited refills of Diet Coke (Yes, I have an addiction. I’m working on it.) My parents had different ideas though. Because of the miscommunication between my teacher and my mom, my parents wanted to take me straight to the hospital. “My leg’s not going anywhere. It's not like it can get more broken,” I protested, still not realizing that they’re picturing open wounds of horror beneath the cast. Guess who got their way. So we went to the hospital. They took more x-rays and showed them to us. The docs called it a “monkey x-ray” because it was so obvious it was broken that a monkey could tell you. The next day I got eat at Chili’s.