Aiiii Muchacha!

It was bound to happen. Today began mostly like any other day, the difference being that on my way to the shop this morning, I took a turn too sharply and fell over, the moped falling on top of me ensuring that my skin got well acquainted with some Mexican asphalt. A myriad of other random, painful things have happened to people here so I'm guessing it was just about my turn. Let me tell ya, my leg has never hurt as badly in my life, and I'm sure parts of my epidermis from my knee cap, calf, ankle, and elbow are still lying mixed up in some gravelly dirt on that particular road. What happened next was a mixture of me crying, saying ow, hoping someone would come to pull the moped off of my leg, and being lifted by my armpits into a standing position by a couple of weathered looking older Mexican men that had been working at the site across the street. Thank God for the kindness of strangers. Its a testament to my vanity that my first thought coming off the pavement was "Crap, that's gonna leave a scar."

I managed to understand and speak enough Spanish in between my incredibly shallow breathing (it's rather hard to get a mental grasp on anything when every other thought is "PAIN!!!") to have the guys drive me home. Arriving, however, was a small comfort because I knew the cleaning up process followed, and if I thought the soap and rinsing and the dabbing with a wet towel was painful, it was a pinprick compared to the iodine treatment Ryan, our resident lifeguard/EMT,  put on my leg next. Holy mother of everything good and holy. I was white knuckling the counter top like it was a lifeline and sucking air between my teeth as if I knew no other way to breathe. Ryan tells me I'm doing good just before he says, "There's still some dirt in there. You're gonna need to scrub that out." I'm sorry, what? You want me to scrub who? My mind reeling in protest, I grabbed the towel from him and proceeded to rub what felt like tiny razor blades over bleeding flesh, whimpering and crying the whole way. Wait, I mean, I growled and bit down on a piece of bark and took it like a MAN. (lies, all lies)

This story ends with me laid up on the couch, knee propped on a pillow, leg sporting numerous bags of ice. None of my invalidity stopped me from hobbling myself and all my oozy wounds to the tienda on the corner to get a glass Coke, which garnered an "Aiiii, muchacha!" from the woman mopping the floor, but despite the dull, stinging ache of my scrapes and the occasional burst of sharp pain from any number of them, I'm rather enjoying my day on the couch watching movies. I'm not in any hurry to do this again any time soon, and I'm currently of the opinion that mopeds are of the devil, but now I have a story to tell and another refreshing Coca-Cola. There's gotta be a commercial in that somewhere.