Sharing Memories Week 13: Broken Bones & Other Accidents

Sharing Memories is a series of weekly prompts to help all genealogists (including me!) with writing up memories of our ancestors and our childhood. 

We all love to find a diary or letters written by great grandma or grandpa where they talk about their lives and share their memories. Think how excited one of your descendants will be to read about your memories and your stories! These stories will be lost after a few generations unless we preserve them. And what better way than in a weekly themed post. 

This week's prompt is "Broken Bones and Other Accidents". Have you ever broken a bone? How? Where? What about sprains or dislocations or traffic accidents? Tell the stories around these accidents. 

I've never broken any bones. But I've had accidents - I guess the worst one was a car accident when I was 20 years old. It was on the 401 Highway heading towards Montreal. I was driving my mother's Volkswagen, and it was night and I was tired. Long story short, the car ended up on the shoulder and then twisted around going the wrong way on the highway. All I remember is the headlights of other cars coming towards us and trying to dodge out of our way. Then the car flipped and began to tumble and roll on its back, spinning as it went. 

To this day I don't know how other cars managed to avoid us and I don't know how we survived. When the car came to rest in a ditch, the top was completely crushed down to the bottom of the windows. The only thing that saved me was I was thrown out of my seatbelt just as the roof caved in, and I was thrown under the seat.

When the ambulance came to take us to the hospital in Kingston, I was full of glass slivers and had a badly sprained neck and back, which still is bothersome to this day. My friend had a tiny cut on his finger and that was it!

My brother-in-law came to get us the next day and take us home while I tried to figure out how to break the news to my mother that her car was demolished. The police officers all shook their heads at the miracle of us making it out alive.

Oh and I met a really cute guy! He helped pull me out of the wrecked car, and had me sit in his car while we waited for the ambulance. It took so long to get there that we had a nice long chat, and he slipped his name and phone number into my purse! Unfortunately I didn't find it until several months had passed and I was in a relationship so never phoned him. I still chuckle over that.