Always secure your oxygen mask first/or A concussion story
|
Me, right before I ate it! |
Before we go into the details of the week that followed, let me re-cap the actual accident. I was at Ghetto Park, (that’s what we call it, it’s a skate park in the middle of the projects in LB) practicing with the Moxi Junior Street team. (Every Sunday at noon if anyone wants to join us). I was getting pretty bold. It was my 4th or 5th time on ramps and I was starting to feel pretty comfortable doing jump transitions and dropping in. Plus, there were a bunch of 10 and 12 year olds making me look bad. So I got ballsy.
I don’t remember how I fell or what caused me to fall. Not because I lost consciousness but just because I don’t know what I did wrong. If I did, I wouldn’t have done it! Uni Mommmer says as I was going back and forth doing my jump transitions that my feet became increasingly farther apart, and then one time I just landed wrong, (you’re supposed to land it with both feet at the same time, and I landed one in front of the other) and then went down the ramp onto my shoulder, and then face!
I want everyone to know that I WAS WEARING ALL MY PADS. And thank god too, because I probably would have lost consciousness, or worse, if I didn’t have a helmet on. I have knocked a tooth out before and I had just gotten $300 worth of dental work done on my front teeth. I was SO grateful I hadn’t broken a tooth! I think in the future, I am going to start wearing my mouth guard to the skate park. Forget losing a tooth, I’m lucky I didn’t break my jawbone! I slammed my face fucking HARD.
|
Karla Sutra took this immediately after the fall |
Just the week prior, my friend Estro Jen had told me a story about going to the skate park in Venice Beach and meeting a dude in a neck brace. He explained that he always wore his helmet, but this fateful day he had loaned his helmet to a child who did not have any protective gear on, and low and behold, that was the day he broke his neck! Estro explained to me that this guy’s story really got to her and she promised him she would start wearing her helmet again. The light bulb came on and she had an epiphany: She said to me, “You see, that’s why you always secure your oxygen mask first.”