Breaking eggs

I'm in the new digs. I have a half-sized refrigerator, combination cooker/steamer, cutting board stained brown, and cupboards. Translation: I can cook. Meaning I can buy uncooked items at the gocery store—chicken breast (cheapest cut—least flavor) or that glorious pork belly or octopus tentacles, or any of the veggies I do not recognize. About three items look like kale. Four look like bamboo. I recognize galangal, chilis, garlic and ginger. What's especially cool is the end-of-day sale rack: discounts on things that are about to go bad. Great place for me to start: even if I fail horribly to turn something edible, I'm out, oh, 3 cents.

So, I went shopping. Chicken breast, pork belly, lemongrass, apatosaurus-caliber bok choy looking stuff, a bushel of bamboo-looking stuff, oh, and eggs and potatoes. How I've missed those. I bought an entire flat of eggs—half the price per unit, and I need little incentive to add an egg to anything. Plus the doc said I should eat more, so there's an excuse to add egg to anything.

It's about a 12 K cruise back, and I have the groceries in my backpack, the eggs in my front basket. About 3K from home, there's a grocery mart a long jog from a muban—translation: picture a 5 on an older digital calculator; the muban is the top arm, the grocery is the bottom.

A guy is pulling out of the grocery on his Honda bike. His wife is on the back. It's dark, but his much is obvious. And they're aged. I'm cruising home, and swerve to pass. But he's turning right. Immediately in front of me. No hole there.

He couldn't be.

It's like a dog humping your leg: there's no hole, there won't be a hole no matter how hard he tries, and the longer he's at it the more frustrated everyone's going to get.

No hole. Nobody would try to make one.

Except this guy.

I almost missed him. It was just a small jig. Mirrors ticked.

I heard my new helmet sliding over a rough something. My right shoulder told me it would hate me. I stopped moving and felt gravel—the opposite side of the road, from spread-eagled, face-down.

A grating noise.

Eyes open. Open? Wow! Eyes open!

Scooter's spinning crazy down the wrong lane. Stops, finally.

Head turns.

Better stand up before I can't. This is going to hurt.

It's a hundred yards from the shop where the guy pulled out to where my bike stopped. I'm most of the way to my bike as I stagger up, still wearing my pack. Everything works, but my left pinkie is numb. Still moves, so nothing permanent, but it's gong to be a doozie. Legs work. Arms work.

There's a Thai person yelling at me. Someone is flat on the street, still.

The Thai guy is not only not helping me move my bike, he's keeping me from doing it.

“For police!” He says“Where you live?

“Muban Farang, down that way.”

Something was wrong with my glasses: the right lens is missing.

Hmm, grades 1 &2, and I have the deep purple bruise, the missing tooth, now oozing road rash and the missing lens. What photo am I posing for this time?

Four people are crowded around me. “You call family. Need family now.

When I tell them I live alone, no family, they actually show surprise and concern.

An ambulance pulls up. I'd like to wash the gravel from my bloody hands, but nobody understands “Wash hands.” I shove the bloody appendages in someone's face and get pointed to the ambulance.
“No, no, mai, mai, mia, isopropal alcohol? Clean wound?”

They start whispering about alcohol.

I get scared and call my boss.

By the time he shows up, the road person is loaded and the other driver has disappeared. A medic is giving me an alcohol wipedown.

The only remaining evidence of an incident is me standing there dazed and the scrape marks from my bike.

“So they don't know your name, your address, your license plate or driver's license number? Man, they must know there's no possible way to fault you—he was the drunk uncle or something. Ususally I step into these and it's all, “Look at all the damage to my bike, this farang owes me!

“You sure you're okay to drive? Need tomorrow off? If so, just call.”

So tomorrow will be an Advil day. Road rash on shoulder, elbow, waist, hip, both hands, a couple fingers pretty torn up. Torso hurts like crazy. Helmet paid for itself.

The weird part is that once I got back to my place, unloaded and washed up, two of the eggs were missing from the center of the flat. None others were broken. And the two were in the bottom of the bag, under some DVDs, unbroken.

Weird.