In 2002, during college, I had a crappy “mountain bike” from a big box store so I wouldn’t care if it got stolen around campus.
I was crossing the street on campus on my way to class, hopped my front wheel up onto the curb, and BAM, front wheel falls off.
I went over the handlebars and landed square on my chin, thus earning the ubiquitous chin scar that everyone has.
While I’m sitting there spewing blood all over (there was still a large blood stain on the sidewalk years later when I finally graduated), I realized that there were pieces of something in my mouth. I started spitting out what I found were pieces of my teeth. Ended up needing to replace parts of 8 molars (I had a good dentist; I have only had to replace one since then).
People stopped to help. One person ran to the nearest building to get paper towels, I handed my cell phone to another saying “call 911”, and a friend came by to take my backpack and bike back to the dorm.
Right when it happened, a campus police office drove by, stopped his car, made eye contact, and drove on. Although the situation was under control, I still filed a complaint that he didn’t do his job by stopping to check on me. Apparently the whole thing was seen on a security camera (stupid campus policy wouldn’t let me have a copy of my crash), and he was canned pretty quickly.
The ER doc thought I might have cracked my jaw, but luckily it was fine. I did need a bunch of stitches in my chin, joining the chin scar club.
I also left the hospital with the phone number of the cute receptionist (I had game even missing 8 teeth and spewing blood out of my chin), but that didn’t go anywhere.
However, there was another girl that I had been seeing off and on, and she would come over to help take care of me while I was on pain meds and a partial liquid diet until my teeth were fixed. That girl and I have now been married for 5 years!
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