There has been so much rumor and speculation regarding the following incident that I feel this story MUST be told.... if only to quiet the whispers that my friend and business associate, "Gene-o" Csuti, has been hallucinating and exaggerating the true facts in question.....
Why Is Gene-o Limping?
Gene-o is my friend.... one of the best. When he hurts, I hurt. When he's happy, I'm happy. When he limps, I limp. In other words, I can practically tell this story in first-person. Trust me. So..... why is Gene-o limping?
Well, it's sort of a long story, and all the sordid details at this point are still a bit beyond my limited comprehension. But I'll try my best.
The simple fact is, I drove over his foot with the tank tread on my tractor. It was truly an awesome event. Remember how, when the Wiley Cayotee runs into a wall in the cartoons, or a rock lands on him, he gets perfectly flat? Like, one-dimensional? Yup, you got it. That's how Gene-o's foot looked as it disappeared under the treads. So I stopped the tractor, it was so awesome.
In fact, what happened really was.... I'm casually demolishing a building, and Gene-o shows up at my shoulder like, - !!POOF!! - out of nowhere. Then he started getting really excited and banging me on the shoulder saying "JOHNJOHNJOHNJOHN...!!" etc. - like he's got a really neat idea or something he has to immediately communicate.
So I stop so I can hear him. I shut the tractor down so I can let him share this great epiphany with me. He's my friend, right? I can listen to his wild-assed ideas once in a while, right? So when I look at him, expecting him to tell me some great new way to attack the wooden structure that I'm crunching up, he's staring down, white as a sheet. "So what's the big deal?" I think, following his gaze downward..... to where his foot disappears under the tread of the tractor.
"OH, SHIT!" I think to myself. I start the tractor again...and I'm not immediately sure whether I should drive forward or backward.....but I'd better do something quick. So my hands, thinking for me, do this really weird thing. The tractor is capable of pivoting with one set of treads stopped dead and the other side grinding away. Well, the next thing I know, the stupid tractor is just sort of pivoting on poor Gene-o's foot. Now, this really hurts, let me tell you! So I figure I shouldn't do that too much.
As soon as I regain control of the darn thing, I drive forward off his foot and...what does he do?? He hits the deck. He just plain drops like a sandbag, and starts crawling away real fast on all fours like he's some kind of go-cart or something. Oh, Shit! Right away I put on my Paramedic's Hat and jump off the tractor and run over to him. It took a bit to catch up with him, 'cause by now he's about 30 yards away and just crawling like a bat out of hell, sending up a dust cloud and everything!
I do the first thing that you're supposed to do as a well-trained Emergency Medical Technician.... I roll him over, look him straight in the eyes, and say...."Hey, man, are you OK?" Well, he's silently howling. But then, I'm suffering right there along with him too, 'cause I feel his pain, right? You can probably picture us out in the middle of this field, both silently howling, me kneeling and Gene-o sitting. And this utterly deafening cacophony of silent howling filling the air around us. Then he starts moving again, almost like magic...like his butt muscles have some sort of cleats on them....you know, like when your ass tries to walk up the back of a dentist's chair when you see the size of the needle coming at you. That's what he was doing. It was really fascinating. And he was going so fast he was leaving a trail of dust again, too.
Then he starts ripping at his boot, and I'm trying to help him peel it off. It's a little mushed out of shape, you recall... and then there's his sock to contend with. I figure I'd better cut the sock off his foot like they do in the movies, but when he sees me as I'm fumbling for my razor-sharp knife he somehow manages to just rip the sock to shreds. And there they are....his toes. "Oh, GOD!" I screamed. They looked terrible! They were so UGLY!!! Oh, what have we DONE to poor Gene-o?! Now I'm REALLY in pain!
I almost fainted, but being a well-trained EMT, I was able to hang in there. The pain was outrageous but the sight of those uglyugly toes was almost unimaginable.
Well, to make a long story short, I rushed him to the hospital, him still howling, sometimes not so silently.... me, in terrible pain for my friend, but maintaining like a real trooper. And when we get to the hospital and he's undergoing examination, I find that his feet have ALWAYS been that ugly, so there's nothing to worry about in that sense. And they x-ray him, and find that nothing is broken -- but I notice that the x-rays even look ugly, too, so in his case, the foot uglies DO go all the way to the bone.
They give him some drugs, but they won't give ME any!!! And I'M the one that NEEDS them. And he gets to go off with this really cute x-ray technician (after she smacks me in the arm for quite inadvertently running over my friend's foot), and they leave me sitting there in the lobby, still silently howling in pain..... maybe not as much for the wounded foot, now, as for the x-ray technician. But, still......!
Well, all-in-all, it was a reallyreallydreadful experience, I shit you not! But I'm coming out of it a little, now. I should be all right in a while.
And Gene-o?? Oh, yah, he's OK. He just drove home after putting me through this traumatic hell. Luckily, he was still in mild shock when he left, so the real pain hadn't hit him yet. I remembered that stuff about expecting the shock-reaction from the extensive medical training I had, so I worked it to both our advantages. I expect that right about now, though, he's no longer howling silently, 'cause that sucker's got to be thawing out and throbbing, about the size of a basketball, blinking on-and-off bright red... unless he went directly to the drug store and got his prescription for pain meds filled. GOD! I hate intense pain like that!!!! I wish I didn't hang around with people who suffer that much!!
Cards and flowers for me will be graciously accepted care of my email address...
-Rossie