Motorcycles, emergency rooms, and arguments with a TV

So there I was, feet over the handlebars, flipping through the air like a damn Power Ranger when I thought to myself, “This is taking longer than I expected.”

That’s when I embraced the concrete. Less forgiving than a car’s aluminum hood, but more room to really sprawl out and connect with the pavement. I think the kids call it “grounding.”

A guru of gnarlyness at one with the blacktop.

Cars prowled by me at arm’s length and Mötley Crüe’s Mick Mars shredded a guitar solo through my headphones. To this day, five years later, when “Live Wire” plays, my veins still pulse with enough adrenaline to put a Hollywood stuntman on ice.

It’s springtime and that means two things for young men with a hankerin’ for thrills: girls in sundresses and motorcycles without frostbite. The two rarely overlap, but my point is, it’s a good time all-around.

Until, of course, you start playing kissy face with car bumpers, like in that one episode of “My Strange Addiction.”

When Caldwell Mario Andretti creakily made his way over to me, I had just managed to grumble to my feet after a few failed attempts that resembled a toddler trying to do burpees.

I think he apologized, checked if I was alright, then plopped into the passenger seat of his Subaru and stared vacantly out of the front until the ambulance arrived. A little woozy, I hobbled to the guard rail and propped myself up like a wine-o just before dawn.

As far as cars catapulting motorcyclists, the cordiality was superb. Five stars. Would wreck again.

Now, Mother Nature is cranking up the thermostat, and the Evel Knievels of the world will soon be putting rubber on the road, zooming past and between and through. I’ll save you the “look twice, save a life” bit.

My little fender-bends-the-back-of-my-motorcycle left me with a bit of bruising and whiplash. No skin off my teeth.

The doc forgot my work note and didn’t prescribe me any of the good stuff, so I spent three hours of my next day stiffly occupying an E.R. waiting room chair, trying to get one or the other.

Right next to a greasy man who had also been hit by a car, but on a bicycle instead.

I don’t like to be outdone in storytelling, but the bicycle bit really takes the gold.

His boots were off and I watched in horror as he dragged his bare, purple-bruised feet over the cold linoleum.

Mind you, these were prime COVID-19 days. We were alone together and separated from the other half of the room by a curtain.

It felt like a B-list horror movie just waiting to unfold, and I, the glass man, could not run.

On top of that, Barefoot continuously argued with the television.

“The Devil Wears Prada” was barely audible, but Barefoot had an opinion on every decision Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep made, often filled with obscenities and paired with the occasional glance for approval from me.

He wasn’t wrong. Hathaway’s in-film boyfriend deserved better, and the fashion world is so dog-eat-dog, but that’s beside the point.

I don’t agree with crazies on principle alone.

When I finally got to see the doc, he practically patted me on the head and said, “You’ll be back at work by the end of the week.”

Next time the EMT watches me fumble at my jacket like a chimpanzee with a shoelace and then has the audacity to let me decide which hospital they’re taking me to, I’m getting wheeled into an establishment that will give me a story worth telling, by god.

No more of this “I got hit on a motorcycle” schtick. How about I got skewered by a pole vault? Or, I played kissy face with a rabid raccoon? Maybe I’ll just ride my bicycle down the interstate.

Don’t be surprised when you read next week about me balancing a bowling pin on my nose, juggling Easter eggs, and getting splattered across Interstate 40 like a fly on a windshield.

Just make sure you pump the story up when you tell your friends.