Luck, believe
Words: physical education, driving, funny event, believes, windows, luck
One morning while I was in Secondary school(standard eight-year), the school bus struck a ditch on the side of the road and rolled over. Luckily, there were only mild injuries.
The bus picked us up at the bus stop at six-thirty. We had a new operator that morning because the teacher who drove the bus was on leave. (Both bus drivers were educators from our school. The new driver, a new entrant teacher.)
My bus stop was the first stop. More or less, seven children usually climbed up here. The bus seats were not as we know them today. They were lengthwise from back to front under the windows of the bus. There were two more lengthwise seats on which the children had to sit back to back. Entering the bus, the boys sat on the left-hand side and the girls on the right-hand side. Since we got in first, we occupied the bus from the rear.
We climbed into the bus; it slowly crept forward. The driver could not make the bus go faster. I recall distinctly that the driver bent over to the steering wheel’s bottom while monitoring where he was travelling.
The bus moved gently, slow the water drainage pipe crossed underneath the road.
All moved in slow motion,
The front wheel climbing over the ditch.
The bus healed over to the right.
We all flew through the air;
over the middle benches.
Just dust, dust and more dust;
scraping of metal on the road.
Everybody landed on top of each other!
A lot of screaming, yelling and crying!
Chaos.
Everybody crept through the emergency exit at the back.
Only I; I could not get up. I could not tread on my right foot.
One of the older schoolboys came back and dragged me out. He made me lay down on the roadside.
Turmoil around me. A passerby took me to the nearest hospital about 25 miles from where the accident had taken place. In those days, the ambulance did not attend to the accidents because they happened on a rural road. I was in shock and agony. The delay in the hospital seemed like an eternity. I don’t recall who and how I got back home.
Fortunately, nothing was broken. Everybody landed on my foot that was why it was severely sprained. Lucky me!
Unfortunately, the DR did not note that I injured my lower spine. I tumbled over the rails of the bus seats and injured my back. I had severe bruises but, nobody thought about a back injury because I never complained.
I constantly had back pain after the accident. I asked the doctors many times to do something about it. The back ace got worse. I had lower back surgery; they put in two plates and screws.
Luckily, my vertebrae are now fused, and it settled my backache. I still need to care what I’m doing, but the chronic pain is gone.
Lucky me, I can still go for regular walks.
I scrap 2 