Why would I need help from sticks and stones, Part 2?

When I was 15, I was a week away from taking my driver’s license test. One week and a simple test stood between me and unfettered freedom—at least in my mind. But my body wasn’t quite on board. It had to go get broken, possibly causing life altering teen drama.

That Saturday morning was sunny and breezy: a perfect morning for a spring soccer game. The opponent was a team made up of my friends from my high school team. Twenty one buddies on the same field sounds like a big party to me. The whistle blew and the game was underway.

About midway through the game, I was dribbling up the field. I juked two or three guys as usual (or by accident) and then came up against a guy we’ll call Splevin Spletano to protect his identity. Splevin was probably one of the nicest guys I knew. I approached him doing my patented cross over spin move, aka, looking like a spaz. I’m sure he was afraid of getting burned like kindling or passed like salt or some other clever schoolyard simile.

Whatever he was thinking, the next thing I knew, I was on the ground. As I lay there, I immediately knew I had broken my collar bone. I’m sure there was no malice intended. In fact, I think I actually just didn’t quite get around his leg, which caused me to basically fall like a tree onto my shoulder. He was apologizing profusely before he even knew I had injured myself. Like I said, he was a nice guy.

I eventually got up, gingerly tested my arm, and subbed out. And then it was off to the hospital. The diagnosis was a fractured clavicle. Eight weeks sidelined from soccer and maybe social life.

For some reason the DMV won’t let you take a driving test when you have a broken collar bone. Perhaps, it’s because lifting your hand above 8 o’ clock on the steering wheel hurts like hell.

So, I had to reschedule my driving test. On top of that, my driving permit expired while I was incapacitated, and I couldn’t take the license test without it. Thus, I had to retake my written permit test before taking the driving piece. My freedom was stuck in neutral, seemingly in reverse. Was my teen life over?

If my life had been a movie, events preceding the soccer game would have included an approaching dance and the hottest and purest girl in school. There would have been non-threatening study dates, a quarterback stud competing for her attention, and a plain looking female confidant. The hot girl would attend the dance with me because I could drive her to it in a sweet ride. But now, without my license . . .

After the trip to the hospital, I would have sunken into a deep depression and explained to my wiser, plain-looking but blossoming friend that this broken collar bone had forever changed the course of my life--in a bad way. And then I’d finally fall for her even though she had wanted me since the second grade. Cue music, hand out tissues, roll credits. Or some version of that. That’s if my life were a movie.

But life wasn’t a movie. No dance. No hot girl. No homely turned comely female friend. Not even much of a social life to lament being lost. In retrospect, all that was lost was six to eight weeks of playing soccer and driving a car that was built the year before my current car. But at the time, it seemed like a slightly bigger deal.

The lesson? The lesson that I often forget after a bad day at work is that failures or set-backs seldomly ruin our lives. They usually end up as tiny blips on our life lines, resulting in no change in the overall trajectories. They aren't worth the stress.

After all, a bad day at work beats a broken collar bone. And a broken collar bone isn’t even that bad.