Der Fahrradunfall (or, Why I Now Have a Pretty Snow-White Adhesive Stuck to my Red, Smarting, No-Longer-Covered-By-Quite-As-Much-Skin Side)

It was a typical Sunday afternoon.
I was on the computer, reading Harry Potter fanfiction online (yes, auf Englisch--I had already studied some German, read about three chapters of the first Harry Potter book in German, and spoken a heck of a lot of German, and the choice was between that and staring at a blank wall. What would you have picked?) when my little brother Phillip (he's 13) came in and asked me if I wanted to go bike riding. Hey, why not?

Unfortunately, something was wrong with the front tire of the bike I normally use. Siggi (the dad here) tried to fix it, but if he knew what was wrong with it I didn't understand him saying so, and in any case I had to use a different bike. I am wobbly on bikes as it is (due to an unfortunate accident back in sixth grade that involved my elbow and the street mating and forming a cute little bloody gravel patch on my arm that needed to be cleaned out with a tooth brush in the ER) and this one had brakes I was not used to. I tested it out before we really took off, trying to get it in my head that I had to push back on the pedals to really stop; the hand break only caused the front wheel to stop rotating. So anyway, after a test ride (have I mentioned that this bike was also a little bit too big for me?) Phillip and I took off.

Phillip is like many kids his age, in Germany or otherwise: he likes going places, and he likes going there fast. That, and he doesn't have too much patience for people who are slower than he is. Understandable, and I love the kid to death, but I was getting a little ticked off with him calling back to me 'schneller!', but I went faster anyways. Then, as we were going down a hill, he stopped. Suddenly. Being such a fast kid, he was naturally in front of me, which meant I had to break too. Unfortunately, my hand instinctively reached for the break attatched to the handle, and before I could think, I had pulled it.

The front wheel stopped dead in motion, but the rest of the bike continued it's natural path--down.

I kinda flew off the bike, landing on the pavement below (where else would I land?).

'OW!' I screamed once, then another time for good measure. 'OW!' I think people were talking around me, but my limbs were sort of a tangle and I was in too much shock to feel anything yet. Well almost anything. A big metal thing landed on my back, and before I could even process the fact that I had landed before the bike, I screamed a third time. 'OOOOOOOOOOW!'

It seemed like a few minutes before the bike was lifted off of me by a nice man from a passing family, but it was really more likely only a few seconds. He started asking questions in German (what else?) but my brain still wasn't exactly tracking things at that point and I barely had any Englisch with me.

'I can't move,' I said, but I don't even think the guy heard me because it suddenly seemed as if I had no voice, a curious ailment seeing as I had been able to scream bloody murder seconds before.

The guy asked me if anything was broken. I untangled myself and tried to sit up, and found I couldn't, though at the time I couldn't figure out why. I told him nothing was, because at that point I was aware enough to figure at least that much out and to answer him in German. He kept talking, but I wasn't understanding any more of it. I started crying then, told him I couldn't understand him, and allowed him to help me to my feet. It took more than a few seconds for me to be able to stand on my own, my legs were shaking so hard, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to walk on my own. A lady who I can only assume was the nice guy's wife came and started walking me in the direction Phillip pointed her to, instructing the kids who had been walking with her and her husband to take the bike.

The lady was really nice and kept talking really soothingly to me. I couldn't understand a word of it. I tried to be polite and go 'mmhmm' and 'ja' every now and then, but I was bawling pretty hard, and I only had two thoughts for the moment and they were in englisch. The first was that my side really hurt, and on further inspection I saw that it had been scraped up pretty bad and was bleeding. I somehow had the presence of mind to realize that I was wearing a white shirt and that it was more than likely now ruined by the blood. The other thought was that I wanted my mother, and I wanted her now dammit.

We walked back to the house and my family was really great about everything; the scrape is nothing serious, I was really very lucky, but it took a long, long time for me to stop crying. At first it was mostly shock but then it was the fact that I wasn't home, and Mom couldn't come and fix everything. The pain was never bad at all, but I couldn't get that thought out of my head. I want Mom. Unfortunately it's still another week until I talk to my family back in the states. I ended up just going upstairs and sleeping for three hours until I was woken up for dinner, and the sleep helped a lot, but my head still hurts and I don't know if I hit it when the bike flipped or if it's from all the crying.

As usual, I have showed myself today to be the epitomy of grace, aptitude, and politeness in all that I do :-D