3 Truths and a LIE

SHOWER THOUGHTS # 3: A couple nights ago in the shower I was thinking about how much I LOVE people who aren't afraid to share embarrassing stories about themselves. I LOVE funny stories. My friend Robin has THE ULTIMATE - I have yet to find someone to top hers. I'd share it, but she tells the story WAY better than I could, plus I don't have her permission but seriously, its classic. After thinking about all the funny stories I've had the pleasure of indulging in, I then got kinda lamed out because I didn't have anything cool to share. Like that get to know you game 3 truths and lie? I feel like I'm never creative enough to share something. My lie is always "I've had braces." Really? That's all I can lie about? My teeth?

So I started to dig real deep into my past to find something. I don't know why, because its not like tomorrow morning someone is going to ask me to play 3 truths and a lie, but I need to have a story just in case. I found one. TRUTH: I killed an old man.

It was the summer of 2008. I was on my way to work at the Jan Thomas Swim School [ yep, that's me, second row 5th one in from the left]. My sister and I would ride our bikes to work along the bike path. We were coming up on a tunnel. Tunnels seem safe and wide and an unlikely place for a remarkable story. That is until an old man is coming down the hill and heading straight toward you. There I was, about to emerge from the tunnel when the old man enters. He's about 5 feet in front of me. I'm in the right side of the lane. He enters on the right - why he didn't stick to his right is unknown to me. Maybe he was drawn to my riding skills in my attractive one-piece navy swimsuit with my name stitched on it. At any rate, I looked at him and thought "Crap, i'm gonna hit this old man!" so I did. The force threw me off my bike but I'm so agile I quickly popped up without a scratch. I turned around and there lay the old man - still on the tunnel cement. "Crap, did the dude die?" He seemed to be gasping for air. So I ran over to him with my body shaking from shock and asked him if he was ok. He seemed to be in the same state I was. He said he couldn't move. At first I panicked and thought he was paralyzed with a punctured lung, but then I realized that this old man probably could move. And he could. I was first terrified not by the prospect of this injured man suing me but that I was gonna be late to work and my boss is going to KILL me. Jan Thomas is not a lady you want to mess with. The the lawsuit thing popped into my head. So I left the man to call my Dad. After laughing, he said I could call an ambulance but that we weren't going to pay for it. So I did just that. That was embarrassing enough calling the ambulance and telling them that there was a bike accident - no not a MOTORCYCLE BIKE accident, a BICYCLE accident and explaining what tunnel we were in. Pretty soon the engines came a roarin', the ambulance and police car pulled up, a stretcher was brought down, a couple cars stopped on the side of the road, the old man's wife and son came rushing in and after answering a couple questions from the police, my last image was the old man getting on the stretcher. Don't know what happened to him in the end. He never showed up dead on the news. I'm sure that this would have been a headliner.