120 oz.

I was finished with 75% of my third 40oz Budweiser and our phones were blowing up. The same people kept calling Travis to ask if he was coming to the party, then they’d call me to ask the same question.

“Yeah, we are about to leave now,” we both would answer.

We could hear all of our friend’s voices in the background of each phone conversation. It was clear a bunch of our friends were having fun at this house party on Duffy and Waters. If it weren’t for the fun we heard through the phone, Travis and I would have taken more time before hurrying out the door of his apartment.

I grabbed two skateboards from the trunk of my Jeep and handed one to Travis. I had to place my last 40oz on the roof of the car so I could grab the second board. At first, it took me a moment to reunite with my center of gravity, because of the buzz. Once I was comfortable, I started going faster. Whenever we’d pass a driveway that had an incline I’d make a sharp carve up it, then roll back down into the street. Then, I started to weave in and out of the streets and sidewalks, when I saw a transition leading from one to the other. My buzz, not only intensified the motions on my board, but also bumped my confidence up, and helped forget about the beer bottle clenched in my left hand.

I can’t remember the exact street we were on when it happened, but I know it was near El Cheapo because that’s where Travis went inside to grab towels. When I saw this slope on a driveway next to a huge tree covered with Spanish moss, I decided to roll with it.

The driveway was connected to an intersecting sidewalk so I directed my board toward that, leaning hard on my toes. I went up the driveway and onto the sidewalk. Then, I pumped once to pick up more speed to go faster past the huge tree on the left. The moss cast a shadow over me and the sidewalk where I started passing. Right before the driveway–I was originally planning to ride down back into the street–I saw it. A tile had been raised in the sidewalk from a root belonging to the huge tree on the left. My front wheels stopped less than a second after I realized the uneven slab of concrete that stopped my board, and threw me to the ground.

My reflexes were just two seconds off. I flew forward from my board and the fact that I had a huge glass bottle in hand temporarily slipped my mind. But, I remembered it as soon as the bottle shattered on the ground with my hand on top of it.

“Are you O.K.?” Travis asked when he skated up to me.

I came to my feet, then held out my hand so we could see it in the light. A fat piece of glass was wedged in between the palm and webbing of two of my fingers. I pulled it out. Blood started running everywhere.

“Man, we need to grab some towels or something for your hand. That's a lot of blood.”

“No,” Pause. “Yeah.”

“El Cheapo is a few blocks this way. Come on.”

We skated slowly on the way. Once there, Travis went inside to grab towels so I didn’t bleed all over the store. While he was inside four cops pulled up and started to raid the house across the street. I stood on the corner watching them kick down the front door and run inside with guns drawn, then looked down and noticed my puddle of blood surrounding my shoes.

“Damn. What’s going on over there?” Travis said to me handing me a stack of brown paper towels he grabbed from the gas station’s bathroom.

Travis asked if I was still good, skating to the party. I told him that I was, so we kept going. When we got there I got bombarded with questions from friends and acquaintances.

“What happened?”

“Do you need to go to a hospital?”

“Did you wash that off yet?”

A friend handed me a beer, and I went to the bathroom to wash my hand. After I ran water over it I became mesmerized. starring into the gash in my hand. The water would clear the blood away, and then I could see inside the sliced webbing. I’d look away to sip my beer then run water over it, so I could look at it again.

Half way through the beer I attempted going outside to socialize with my friends and tell them I was fine. As I walked out the bathroom door it hit me. I wasn’t fine. I turned around and noticed how pail my skin looked in the mirror. Then, decided to pull my phone out and call Jeff, because I knew he was still at the dorm.

“What’s up, Whit?”

“Jeff, I need you to come pick me up. I cut my hand and lost some blood.”

Ten minutes later Jeff was at the house. He drove me back to the dorm and helped me get past the security guard upstairs to my room. Once we got to the third floor my head was light, and vision blurry. We opened my door and I looked to Jeff and said: “I think I might get sick.”

The next thing I remember, is waking up with my head hanging over the toilet. When I raised it I saw Jeff standing over me, and my roommate behind him wearing a panicked look.

“Jeff, what happened?”

“You fainted right as we walked through your door.”

Then my roommate, Adam, asked: “How are you going to bandage that up?”

“Adam, do you have any super glue?” I asked him.

“Yeah, but, is that sanitary?”

“Sure! My lacrosse coach took a stick to the face during practice one time and he was bleeding from above his eye really bad. So, he sent me to a gas station to grab him super glue,” I explained.

“Didn’t the army do that in war, too?” Jeff said back to me

“I think so. I know it worked for my coach though. I was the one that had to do it for him.”

Jeff helped apply and bandage it. The next day it looked like a white scab in between my two middle fingers. After a week or two, it heeled. All I had to do was chip out the superglue, disinfect it, then reapply more glue to seal the wound. I’ll always have the scar from falling with glass, but I’ll can't say I'll skate with a bottle that big again.