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Blogs by Bobbi Ann Duffy
Gotta Minute? 12/20/2009 12:14:44 AM
Bad Hair Day Strikes Again!!! To say that yesterday was a very bad “hair day” would be a gross understatement. When I left home for Florida Atlantic University the sun was shining, the temperature was about 75 degrees and all seemed right with my world. Before I’d gotten three blocks from my house the sky opened up and I got soaked. I had two choices; go home or go on. Either way I was facing a four block walk in driving way. I chose to go on. I made my bus with five minutes to spare. Being wet is bad, but being wet on a frigid bus is far worse. The buses here have two temperature controls—on and off. Off was not an option because without the AC the windows fog up and the driver can’t see. So I sat on the bus freezing my patootie off until it was time to transfer to my second bus.
I got soaked again on the one block walk to the second bus, but it had a range of degrees for the driver to choose from. I was still wet, but I was no longer freezing. The second bus ride is only twenty minutes long. It took me to the Delray Beach Tri-Rail station, (the local train from West Palm Beach to Miami line). I got off bus two, got wet and waited twenty-five minutes for bus # 3.
Actually, Bus # 3 is route #2. I took it from the Delray Beach train station to the Boca Raton train station. That took about thirty-five minutes and another twenty minutes of waiting for bus #4, route 94. The fourth bus only takes fifteen minutes to get me to the university.
Once at school, I made a beeline for the library. There I did a computer search for the books I needed and any articles I could find on the subject of J.R.R. Tolkien. I managed to fit sixteen into my laptop carrier. I made up a list of articles to view one day next week and started home.
I only waited for twelve minutes for the first bus home, #94, and then transferred to the #2, and then the shuttle to connect with the #1. All went well, the skies had cleared, I was dry, and happy to be going home. And that’s when it happed! I saw the car pulling out in front of us before the driver did. I didn’t even have time to say, “Oh, My God!” before the impact. If I’d been sitting anywhere else I would have been safe, but I wasn’t.
When the first passenger flew into me, he pushed me into the bulkhead that covers the wheel well. The second person that hit me pinned me there for what seemed like hours.
Seven of us had to be taken to the hospital. I was the least injured so I got to go last. Added to the 90 minutes I waited to be transported, I sat on a gurney in the hall of emergency medicine for three hours waiting for X-rays taken and read. I got away cheap. I come home with a pair of crutches and an ankle brace for my sprained ankle. My only other injuries were mainly huge black and blue marks over the right half of my body.
My friends Loraine and Rosemary came to the hospital to wait with me and take me home. After a hot bath, feeding the cats and taking my medications I crawled into bed and allowed drugged sleep to overtake me. It was the best way of dealing with the pain.
I wasn’t sure I could go to the Christmas party tonight, but I wasn’t about to let an idiot driver rob me of it. So Loraine and I went to the party, had a great dinner and I got a wonderful tea cup with saucer for my gift trade. And that brings me to this blog. I know I’ve been kind of lax about writing in it, but school takes an enormous amount of time. Graduate school requires that you get at least a “B” in all classes. If you get a “C” you have to repeat the class.
So this morning I started reading the sixteen books I brought home last night so that my paper on Tolkien will be an “A”. I’ll say good night, and happy holidays to all of you. My ankle is starting to hurt a lot so it’s time to take my meds and slip into bed with the cats, Hamlet and Ophelia for the night.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and I’ll write soon.
