The Stupid Question

When I was in High School one of my best friends was Big Bill.

Big Bill was a very large boy. Not as in fat, but tall and brawny in a classic Germanic way, square jawline and all. He was the best type of friend, and we were nearly inseparable.

However he wasn’t always the brightest pebble on the beach.

There was a big hill in Edmond, just a few blocks from C.S.U., that ran for a 3-4 block distance and was pretty steep.
Naturally being into skateboarding it was too much for me to resist.
Back then I had never heard of skateboarding pads and helmets. (I don’t think T.G.&Y. would have had them anyway.) But I did have a motorcycle helmet that I would wear when “boarding” the more dangerous hills.

This hill may have been the most dangerous in town. The road was made of concrete that had big tar filled cracks in it. The trick was to be going fast enough to skip over those sticky cracks.

That particular day Big Bill was on his bike so he could tell me how fast I was going (he had a speedometer on his bike).

I had kicked my board as fast as I could get it to go before I hit the hill.

Once on the hill I was zooming right along. I had squatted down low to lower my center of gravity, spread my arms out to improve my balance, and I was well into the ride, skimming over the cracks, when a girl I knew pulled beside me in a V.W. Bug. She honked, and I waved as she sped off.

That wave was nearly my undoing.

When my right hand went up my skateboard hit a crack and went left.
Next thing I knew I was airborne. Now, being airborne doesn’t hurt at all. The bouncing however, is another story.

I hit the pavement, bounced, hit it again, bounced, hit the curb, bounced, then rolled up the embankment through sand-spurs and briers.
I stopped about ten feet up the embankment. My helmet had been shattered into five or six pieces. The only thing holding it together were the steel bands inside it.
My back was raw, and full of stickers.

Big Bill ran up and asked me The Stupid Question: “Are you O.K.?”

When I’m in pain I tend to be,well, let’s just say cranky…
I sarcastically told Big Bill “I’m great, just pull these stickers out of my back.”
What I didn’t know was that the remains of my t-shirt were pinned to my back by those stickers.

Big Bill grabbed the tail of my t-shirt and pulled the whole thing off in one huge RIP!!
Have you ever been in so much pain that you get high from the combination of endorphins and shock?
Yep, I had a serious pain buzz going.
That’s when the cop showed up. He stopped his car rolled down the window and asked The Stupid Question: “Is he O.K.?”
Big Bill waved at him and yelled out “He’s just fine officer”.
The cop just shook his head and drove away.

I went ballistic on Big Bill.
“Why did you say that? This hurts like hell!! I need to go to the hospital!”
Big Bill’s soft reply “But you said you were great….”
Big Bill was nothing if not a good trooper. He walked with me all the way to the hospital and called my Mom to let her know what happened.
I had scraped my left elbow almost to the bone and fractured it, fractured a few ribs and had a mild concussion.

Of course as soon as Mom arrived she asked me The Stupid Question…..