It's kind of surreal how certain phrases can cause normal conventions and situations to just drop away. There are very few things in life that have ever made me exclaim 'What the fuck?!' without conscious effort but thats exactly what I said when I got back to my desk and saw the text message (and missed call) from my wife.
"Sister was in a car accident. She broke her neck"
By school policy my wife (teacher) is supposed to let her principle know if she has to leave during class. When she couldn't get a hold of him in the office and was going to call around to try and get him another teacher told her to "Just get outta here!" and brought her class into my wife's so my wife could leave and the kid's wouldn't be left unsupervised. Normally cramming that many kids into one room would result in barely controlled chaos but they were all perfectly behaved because they knew why.
I had slightly more time as I was waiting to find out what hospital I was driving to (call with wife interrupted by a call to her with more details) so I did something I absolutely, 100% knew was the wrong thing to do but couldn't help myself. I knew she had broken her C2 vertebra so I googled it and found out that C2 is the most dangerous vertebra to break and has the nickname "Hangman's break". Yep looking that up was super dumb. Kinda a weird feeling when you start with a situation that's in the 'worst case scenarios' section (Broken neck) and then find out that its the worst subsection within Broken Neck (Broken C2)
I've had the misfortune of telling people I would miss work for the death of a relative and because of a broken neck within a short period of time and the latter produced different reactions. I can't quite put my finger on it but the best analogy I can think of is that 'broken neck' is a better get-out-of-jail-free card than even death or 'in the hospital'. Not that there would be obstacles for me needing to leave in either case but little things were different. People's reactions were different and offered to pick up my tasks faster and were expecting a longer time away from work. My only thought is that while someone dying is bad its generally something that everyone has to deal with. Occasionally it can even be viewed as a good thing if they were suffering towards the end. While rushing to the hospital is not a good sign there is a chance everything will be ok or the known reason isn't as high on the "Oh shit" list. But a broken neck is universally known as a terrible thing that is right at the top of that list and not everyone has to deal with it so maybe that makes it more visceral.
Fortunately, if the bar is set at 'Broken Neck', the sister is doing quite well. She'll be in a neck brace for an extended period of time with some severe movement restrictions but they are thinking it will heal without surgery and it doesn't look like she'll lose any mobility
So thats a bit of rambling but I just thought the whole things was surreal\unique\weird.
"Sister was in a car accident. She broke her neck"
By school policy my wife (teacher) is supposed to let her principle know if she has to leave during class. When she couldn't get a hold of him in the office and was going to call around to try and get him another teacher told her to "Just get outta here!" and brought her class into my wife's so my wife could leave and the kid's wouldn't be left unsupervised. Normally cramming that many kids into one room would result in barely controlled chaos but they were all perfectly behaved because they knew why.
I had slightly more time as I was waiting to find out what hospital I was driving to (call with wife interrupted by a call to her with more details) so I did something I absolutely, 100% knew was the wrong thing to do but couldn't help myself. I knew she had broken her C2 vertebra so I googled it and found out that C2 is the most dangerous vertebra to break and has the nickname "Hangman's break". Yep looking that up was super dumb. Kinda a weird feeling when you start with a situation that's in the 'worst case scenarios' section (Broken neck) and then find out that its the worst subsection within Broken Neck (Broken C2)
I've had the misfortune of telling people I would miss work for the death of a relative and because of a broken neck within a short period of time and the latter produced different reactions. I can't quite put my finger on it but the best analogy I can think of is that 'broken neck' is a better get-out-of-jail-free card than even death or 'in the hospital'. Not that there would be obstacles for me needing to leave in either case but little things were different. People's reactions were different and offered to pick up my tasks faster and were expecting a longer time away from work. My only thought is that while someone dying is bad its generally something that everyone has to deal with. Occasionally it can even be viewed as a good thing if they were suffering towards the end. While rushing to the hospital is not a good sign there is a chance everything will be ok or the known reason isn't as high on the "Oh shit" list. But a broken neck is universally known as a terrible thing that is right at the top of that list and not everyone has to deal with it so maybe that makes it more visceral.
Fortunately, if the bar is set at 'Broken Neck', the sister is doing quite well. She'll be in a neck brace for an extended period of time with some severe movement restrictions but they are thinking it will heal without surgery and it doesn't look like she'll lose any mobility
So thats a bit of rambling but I just thought the whole things was surreal\unique\weird.
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