Hello there! My brother @DennyGalindo has been preaching the value of #steemit for a few weeks now and as he knows I enjoy writing stories from time to time, his relentless enthusiasm for the website wore me down and I decided to publish one of my best (at least in my opinion) as my #introduceyourself. This story is a long one, so I have split it into 3 parts. This is the first of the three. Enjoy!

10,000 Dollar Smile

The Chronicles of my face from the nose down

Chapter 1 – Things in Threes

It had been a rough new years I thought as I sipped some Jonny Walker Red Label from a plastic Dave and Busters rocks glass I had gotten over the course of college somewhere. It was college, so although I had developed a taste for scotch, I hadn’t exactly joined the Waterford crystal frequent buyer’s club for scotch and scotch accessories. Of course, this was just Jonny Red, not exactly an 18-year single malt either. Nevertheless, after the days I had just been privy to, it would be nice to take it easy for an evening…

It all started with the Alamo bowl in San Antonio.

December 30, 2006

I had jumped in the car with a couple buddies of mine and two girls they knew from college. We were leaving the game after a Texas victory over Iowa, and had a night of cocktails, loud music, and more than likely some other sorts of debauchery in store for the evening.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that the traffic leaving a college bowl game wasn’t exactly driver friendly. After hours of tailgating and a smorgasbord of boot flasks, floppy flasks, plastic flasks, body flasks, and any other alcohol carrying device you can think of, it wasn’t a stretch to think that not everyone on the road needed to be there. As we see the brake lights ahead, the passenger (a San Antonio Native) pointed at the upcoming exit and shouted “Take that one! We’ll go around it!.” With that, the light green Volkswagen bug jetted towards the exit and we all rejoiced for a moment as each of us sat so pleased with our clever and novel idea of “avoiding traffic.”

We were, in fact, so pleased that we failed to notice some of the “Road Closed” signs that were flashing by the car and only became aware of our poor decision when the pavement morphed into a bit more of gravel and mud mixture that as far as the bug was concerned, could be called quick-sand. It didn’t take long after that to realize how stuck we really were. I stepped out of the car with my two friends. “Look, everyone quit bitching for a minute and, we can pull this thing out pretty easily. Then we’ll just push it back to the pavement.” Someone belted. Riiiiight, I thought, as I happened to notice my feet slowly sinking into the dark black goop that we were so quickly going to get out of.

Three shirts, two towels, two right shoes, three left shoes, and an hour and a half later, we all sighed with relief. Not because we finally got the car out of the mud, but because we had sighted the Triple-A tow truck that we called after a half hour of literally no movement other than the spinning of the tires. About a half hour later we were out of the mud and back on our way, or so we thought.

About 10 more minutes down the road the car began to sputter almost simultaneously with any good cheer we had left. Out of Gas. Unbelievable. Having already used Triple-A once this evening, we were lucky enough to get a hold of some friends of ours that lived near the area. It could have been a relatively painless “out-of-gas” experience, as it didn’t take more than 15 minutes for our rescuers to arrive with a 5-gallon tank of gasoline. Surprise, surprise, the spout on the tank “wasn’t working correctly” and what was originally 5 gallons quickly became 1 gallon. I don’t know if it was user-error or if the tank really was malfunctioning, but regardless, it was approaching 1 AM and all anyone wanted to do was get home. If it was user error, it would be understandable, given the ridiculous evening we had had up to this point. With our fingers crossed we started the car, and hurried to the nearest gas station. This was a tough night, but the next night was New Year’s eve, and it could go nothing but smooth compared to the evening we had just endured.

December 31, 2006

New year’s eve morning came with good weather and the typical New Year’s buzz in the air. Eveyone was excited for the evening and excitement only built as we watched college football and the clock slowly wind towards the new year.

We spent New Year’s eve in downtown San Antonio with champagne toasts, a variety of other cocktails, women dressed to the nines, and an eclectic array of music and dancing. We left the bar around 2 am and were headed home to have an after party that was planned to take us well into the morning of the New Year. We piled back into the light green Volkswagen and didn’t give a second thought to the driver or whether or not anyone should or shouldn’t be driving.

I was sitting behind the driver in the back seat and was with a few friends. Aubree was driving, and TJ and Steven were the other two passengers. There was a 12 pack of Corona long necks that under my legs that were designed to keep our whistles wet until we could make it to the after party. I cracked one open and we laughed and joked as we started the trek out of the city.

WHAM. In a split second things changed. My shirt and the car and people around me were covered in spilled beer as the remainder of the Corona bubbled out of the bottle onto my jeans. I looked through windshield and saw only a flash of slow motion as I see the black Tahoe that we clipped in the middle of the intersection flip off the road and into a ditch. The car jolted forward and I feel it accelerating forward while all else is sitting still, a little stunned. >“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” TJ chokes out after being the first to realized that Aubree had driven away. Aubree sat driving, clearly in shock, a little confused. Apparently, she “woke up” at TJ’s remarks, “HOLY SHIT Ya’ll, What do I do?” Aubree stammered. “We have to go back – otherwise it’s a hit and run”

We took our next right, dropped the beer off in a random parking lot (at the decision of each person in the car) and finished the circle to arrive back at the scene of the accident.

Then – things got crazy. A group of police officers had arrived and as they saw us round the turn to complete the circle I see one of them mouth into his radio “Green Volkswagen, Front bumper damage, it’s a match” and they had surrounded the vehicle within seconds.” Each officer had his pistol drawn and the next thing I hear from San Antonio’s finest is

“GET THE F*CK OUT OF THE CAR.”

Now the car was a two-door, so it was easy for the driver and passenger to oblige this request; however, for myself it was a little more difficult. Aubree and TJ were basically dragged onto the street, meanwhile Steven was able to get out pretty easily, as he was sitting behind the passenger side exit. Then there was me. I was feeling pretty cozy in my behind-the-driver predicament as I surveyed the seemingly endless number of police issue pistols pointed in my direction.

“KEEP YOUR FCKING HANDS UP” one of them belts out, while another is stealing the first gentlemen’s thunder with another round of “GET THE FCK OUT.”

Without thinking, I tried to move to the right to squeeze my way out of the passenger seat, and in my attempt to do this I put my hands down to give myself some leverage to push myself out of the car. Big mistake. This little action immediately caused a chorus of officers to sing out

“KEEP YOUR FCKING HANDS UP – AND GET THE FCK OUT OF THE CAR!”

Perplexed, I stopped moving for a second working out in my mind that I would have to get out of the car, without the use of my most useful appendages. Not wanting to delay any longer I solved my puzzle using a series of scoots and bounces towards the passenger side exit. As soon as I was within reaching distance of one of the officers, he didn’t hesitate to grab my shirt and throw me on the ground next to my group of friends. Well, I thought, “at least we’re in good company.”

Shortly after we were all searched and the driver, Aubree was taken away for a sobriety test, Steven, TJ and I were handcuffed and sat down on the curb. The San Antonio police had their hands full tonight and the radio chatter sounded like they were bringing in a paddy wagon. Sure enough, our little rag-tag group on the curb watched from the curb keeping mostly quiet and thinking about the icy grip of the steel cuffs on our wrists. Well, at least until the wagon pulled up.

Within a matter of minutes after the wagon pulled up, things looked like they were starting to get organized, when once again…

WHAM. We stared in disbelief. What the hell? Did that just happen we all said and thought in unison. A white Chevy truck had just plunged head first into the back of the paddy wagon. The driver had fallen asleep, and it didn’t help that he seemed to speak a little more Spanish than English. This gentlemen got an even more aggressive welcome than our original entrance and the truck was the object of every officer’s affection within hearing distance. Pistols flew out of holsters and the bright young officer assigned to watch us on the curb ran to assist his brethren.

Our curb crew watched in amusement as the officers proceeded to break the truck’s window, THEN wake the driver up, and drag him out of the car in a fashion that helped us all remember how thrilling it was earlier when we also received San Antonio’s five-star treatment. While we watched this, by some delayed miracle, a nearby car alarm starts going off. To a group of any other people this may have only been a slight annoyance, but to us it was a little more than that. Just a day earlier, we had made the trip to San Antonio, wherein we had spent the better hour and half on the drive from Austin listening to a Dane Cook standup comedy act. For anyone familiar with him, he does one bit about car alarms, and during one of his routines he tells the audience of the lyrics he has written to a typical car-alarm sound.

Needless to say, TJ, after hearing the alarm go off, turns and looks at me on the curb and his face slowly cracks into a grin.

“HELLLLLOOOOOOOO…. IMMMMMM A CAAAAARRRRR.”.

he starts saying doing his best car-alarm Dane Cook impression. I couldn't have contained myself if I wanted to. I bowl over laughing, handcuffs and all. Regardless of whether you’ve heard the Dane Cook skit or not, if you could look at this situation from above, it would make you laugh regardless of your perspective. I say this because, as we sat laughing, one of the officers had attempted to silence us, and we probably would have listened, had he not been laughing at us the whole time. The rest of the night was ordered chaos, and eventually we three curb sitters were taken to detectives to give our statements and finally released. We came to find out that the whole scenario was on the San Antonio news and anyone watching closely would have seen us watching intently from our sideline view on the curb next to the paddy wagon. What a night.

January 1, 2007

Upon our arrival back to Austin; we all let out a deep sigh of relief. The plan for our evening was muddled at best, but there was a unanimous consensus that we had all had our fill of excitement for the weekend and should probably take it easy. And so, we arrive full circle, back to my glass of scotch. As I sipped my glass of scotch, I settled down to rehash our weekend and try and avoid any more dramatic events for at least a few days.

We sat on the couch and talked about what we could do for the evening while the TV droned on in the background with a pleasant British accent. Someone had gotten the Planet Earth DVDs for Christmas and they had played almost consistently since we had returned from the holidays. After a little debating, we decided to go to Main Event; a popular bowling alley. There was a special there that evening, and it seemed settled down enough to be fun, yet it would end early enough to be a light evening.

There were about 10 of us at the bowling alley, so we decided to get two lanes. The bowling was fun, and in spite of an inordinate amount of trash talking – no one present was going to quit their day jobs for a spot on the PBA tour (Is that what it’s even called?). We started to wrap up our round when Taylor, a high-school friend of my roommates, and myself decided to joke around and throw two balls down the same lane at the same time. Not a great joke, I’m aware, but at this point we were simply waiting, and anything to occupy the time was welcome. We stood at the front of the lane and were about to begin when someone behind me calls my name. “Bobby, what are ya’ll doing?” I turn around to respond and briefly mention that we were going to throw two at a time down the lane. With that, I turned back around, excited to finish our little plan.

Mistake. Taylor, not realizing I wasn’t paying attention, had decided to make his backswing the dramatic sort and as he flung the bowling ball backwards, he timed it perfectly to connect with my front teeth and thrown my head backwards towards the chairs. My eyes opened wide with shock as I shot my hand towards my mouth where the impact had just occurred. In addition to being a little dazed from this 12 pound shot to face, I started to get concerned as I felt the bottom half of my teeth crumble off into my hand. I ran to the bathroom and tried to wipe away some of the blood that was coming off of my gums, but as I splashed some water and started feeling the damage to my teeth, one of the teeth simply fell out. “That’s not good…” I thought.

I walked back out to the lanes where our entire group stared at me. “Heeeey guys… I think I need to go to the hospital.” I said, and proceeded to grin at the group showing off the gap that had replaced the area where my tooth had once been. A few gasps came from the girls with us and a muted “Holy shit” shuddered out of a few of the guy’s mouths. We worked out the drivers, paid our bill, and off we went, to the emergency room. On the way there, I made a few phone calls trying to find out what you’re supposed to do when your tooth falls out. We didn’t really come to a good solution, but did eventually get to the emergency room. After a little paperwork, and a decent chunk of wait time, we were ushered back. I sat on a hospital bed while my friend Jeff stood at the foot of the bed. I wasn’t in too much pain, but we were just talking and giving our best hypotheses as to what the doctor would do to fix my precarious little situation.

The doctor came in with a smile and asked if I still had the tooth. He looked at it and said casually

“Well, let’s put that sucker back in.” I cocked my head to the side, as if to say “Pardon?”

The doctor seeing my disbelief, moves on to explain that the only thing you can do is put the tooth back and hope it can heal properly until you get to a dentist – which we all knew probably wouldn’t be until the following day. I was hesitant at first, but a nurse who followed the doctor in had hooked me up to an IV and only moments before I mount a small protest, the doctor says the name of some medicine and that it should help me relax and only takes a second to kick in. I was in mid sentence seconds later… “Wait Doctor, you mean you’re just going to… Woooah… that stuff is awesome.” Jeff laughed in the background and said he saw my entire face just relax and smile at the same moment. Surely enough, the doctor jammed my missing tooth back into my mouth and I went on about my way, I did however manage to ask the doctor a few more times what the stuff he gave me was.

And so, as the night progressed from January 1st to January 2nd, Jeff drove me home and looked at me,

“Well, you’ve had a rough year.” I snickered to myself, still a little high on the pain killers from earlier. “Yea, it doesn’t start off much worse than this… I did still win at bowling right?” “Hah, yea you did” Jeff remarks. “So I guess you’ve got that…”

I sighed. The last three days of my life had been ridiculous. Maybe its true that bad things happen in threes. Maybe I was just unlucky. What I didn’t know, was that this would be the first of three accidents I would sustain that would affect my face, below the nose. And just as my year started with three bad nights, the injuries I would suffer would hold to that pattern.

To be continued...