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Life lessons

What Breaking My Leg Taught Me About Priorities

How using crutches had unintended but beneficial consequences

Paul Thomas Swann

Photo by Sergio Rodriguez - Portugues del Olmo on Unsplash

The impact threw me from the motorcycle into the air in the opposite direction of the way we had been traveling.

Physics is funny like that!

I landed on my right leg, which snapped like an unlucky baseball bat in the hands of an angry Bo Jackson who just struck out.

Things were worse for my friend Tim, who lay screaming on the ground because the car’s chrome trim had peeled off and sliced into his right leg making just a big mess.

Let me back up a bit:

We’re in the eighth grade at Adams Middle School (now Saraland Middle School). And I’m struggling academically, which was par for the course for me. I am sure I didn’t know the word ‘academically’ at the time. But I knew my grades were pretty bad. It’d help if I actually opened a book every now and then.

But why? There are so many things to do outside.

It was my friend Tim’s birthday. His brother had given him a motorcycle, which is just way too incredible for words. Imagine an eighth-grader getting such a present. There was one catch, well besides not having a driver’s license:

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