Speed Bump Sadie

“You need to live in a bubble,” is a saying I have been told so many times in my life. To say I am accident prone is an understatement.

In high school my nickname was “SPEED BUMP!” A nickname I would never live down! I was named Ms. MOST ACCIDENT PRONE in the high school year book 📚. It’s embarrassing enough I was also named class brown noser in high school but also Ms Most Accident Prone too? It still follows me 24 years later when I run into old classmates and we chuckle about it.

It was snowing outside and being the geek I was, I was helping a teacher and walking across the street to the junior high to drop off a document to another teacher when boom 💥 it HAPPENED?!?! Hit metaphorically by surprise and physically by a car 🚗 in the cross walk sending me 30 feet in the air into the next crosswalk.

All I saw out of the corner of my eye as I was walking through the crosswalk was a glimpse of a speeding car and then nothing for a few minutes. When I came to, to my utter surprise and embarrassment, a crowd of over 100 students and teachers were standing around me. To make matters worse, all the windows of the junior high across the street were engulfed with bodies staring at me. I was the focal point and sole amusement park attraction at that moment. One of my teachers at the time covered me with his winter jacket as I waited anxiously for the ambulance to come and whisk me away from all the chaos that surrounded me. All my injuries were secondary compared to the embarrassment of the crowd of my peers, at least that’s how I felt at that moment. Yes I was seriously injured but sometimes embarrassment can take over any other feeling or emotion. When I was well enough to return to school, I was embraced by my friends but also named speed bump at that time. I had to live with that name for the rest of my high school years. Imagine being called speed bump walking down the crowded school halls everyday! It was quickly becoming redundant and annoying but something I had to embrace and accept. It was bad enough I was the brown noser of the school so to also acquire an embarrassing nickname just put a stamp on my high school journey. I immersed myself in eleven clubs and honor societies to keep myself busy and try to forget the halo of chaos that followed me everywhere I went my senior year. Survival and sanity were my main goals to make it to graduation and put the embarrassing moment in the record books where it would hopefully stay forever. I did just that.

I graduated and never went back there again to this day. I didn’t even attend my 20 year reunion. I was at a stalemate. I wanted to see how everyone grew up after 20 years but the fear of “speed bump” coming up succumbed and took over my attending the event. Embarrassment won again, even all these years later. I occasionally run into old classmates and it sometimes comes up but I make light of it, laugh and quickly change the subject. The acceptance of being nicknamed speed bump finally fell within me yet hoping it would be forgotten.

At 17, I started working at the Friendly’s restaurant in my town. Looking back now, that wasn’t the most wise choice considering many classmates would frequent there. I was a great waitress, very charismatic and liked by my coworkers and by the customers. I really loved my job but embarrassment lurked around me in that halo again. To say being named accident prone in high school was accurate is an understatement. The things I’m about to mention could only happen to “speed bump Sadie.” It was there after many “only me” catastrophes, that I was told I should live in a bubble. About to weeks of being employed there the so called disasters started. One normal and mundane day, I was carried a try of coffee milkshakes to a table of nurses in white scrubs, YES.. WHITE SCRUBS, and a coffee milkshake toppled off the tray covering one of the nurses in brown ice cream. Needless to say, I was mortified. With no time for my brain to react, I ran into the freezer with my arms on a shelf and began crying. After about 5 minutes passed and I slowly started to regain my composure, I tried to lift my arms off the shelves to go in the hallway where it was warm and take a breather. Well.... NOPE, that was not happened! Both my elbows were frozen to the shelf and I was STUCK in the freezer. I started to panic a bit as I was stuck until someone would eventually need to enter the freezer. Mind you it was absolutely freezing and I had a waitress short sleeved shirt on. Luckily, about ten minutes later, a cook had to get corn from the freezer and found me! She quickly went to get help and got the boss and other employees to try to free me. Eventually after many failed attempts, I was ripped free from the shelf by a warm rag. Of course I was bleeding but the laughter of my coworkers after the fact was absolutely embarrassing as could be and of more importance at that time. You’d think that would be the only embarrassing moment at Friendly’s but unfortunately not at all!

The following year, I became a manager at Friendly’s. I was not only responsible for the employees but I had to cook as well when needed. It was 6 am on a Monday morning and I was working in conjunction with one of my other favorite managers. I went into the refrigerator to stock up for the fastly approaching breakfast service. “Speed bump Sadie” does it again. I went to reach for the sausages on a high shelf when the metal tin fell out of my hand and sliced my top lip right open. (I still have the scar 24 years later) I ran out of the room pouring blood 🩸 and scared the bejeezes out of my much older coworker/friend. She was screaming and called an ambulance. I had done it again. Of course that was a story for the Friendly’s record books but am I done with the Friendly’s catastrophes? Nope!! A few months later as one of the two managers on shift, I had to go up in the attic to grab supplies to stock the ice cream area. Usually it’s such an easy, menial efforts task but not that day. I pulled down the stairs and as I was walking up the stairs I hear a waitress asking me “ can I put the stairs up to grab an ice cream from the freezer? I’ll be quick.” So I said sure. Well... She forgot to put the stairs back down and I was stuck in the 100 degree attic for 2 hours sweating profusely. In a normal situation if a manager goes missing since there’s only 1 manager on at a time, someone would go looking for them; but “Speed Bump Sadie’s” misfortune struck again. Since there were two managers on duty that day, everyone assumed I had left for the day this hadn’t looked for me. After a few hours of trying to push the stairs down with no success and suffering from exhaustion I gave it one last ditch effort with all my might and I was able to angle myself in such a way that I was able to push the stairs down and escape. Drenched in sweat, I re-entered the dining room where I hear an employee say “ Sadie we thought you went home. What the heck happened to you?” When I told them where I was, someone said they thought they heard banging but dismissed it. “Only you Sadie,” I hear. Another one for the books.

Done? Nope?!?! Lastly, coincidentally I was working with the same manager as the aforementioned incident when we both decided to do inventory in the attic that day. Initially everything was fine. Shocker, I know! Then we both decided to throw down some supplies and commence to walk down the stairs and finish our inventory. She proceeds first and all is fine without incident. I embark on my journey down the attic stairs and a leg slips through the slats this hanging me in the air from the stairs. My coworker (an older woman) was frantic. She was too frail and lacked the strength to help me free my leg without me falling. We hit a brick wall with this incident. With the stairs down nobody could get by do it was just us. I hung there for a good 10 minutes before she held me in a way to where I wouldn’t fall and I grabbed onto a stair and freed my leg. Thankfully, I was safe without incident or injury. My coworker and I both needed a drink after that one! As the years went on, I, “Speed Bump Sadie” continued my antics and disasters at Friendly’s . There are too many to tell. Let’s just say that all these years later when we all get together for dinner, at least one of those lovely memories come up. Working there on and off for 17 years, we became a family, so my clumsiness and being accident prone was a well known fact and well received joke and accepted fact.

As an adult, the “Speed Bump Sadie” embarrassing disasters continue to this day. I definitely live up to the nicknames I’ve acquired over the years. In short compilation; got hit with a softball 🥎 by a teammate before a game and broke my arm (now if it was during a game would have been worth it (ha), tripped off my own walkway and broke the same arm, got my foot stuck in a hole in the grass on my property while throwing out garbage and tore ligaments in both my knee and ankle, slipped on a sock on my bedroom floor and broke my tailbone and lastly, walked face first into my screen door breaking my glasses and cutting my eye.

Needless to say, I have been an embarking hot mess of a clutz my whole life. I’ve embraced it comically and fully. My family and friends to this day still say I need to live in a bubble and I still occasionally get called speed bump but I’m alive and living the best life I can. Looking forward to all the future embarrassing moments that are inevitable to come. Might as well embrace the silly things in life rather than dwell on them. “As long as we have our health, we have everything,” my mother says and it’s so true. I have no regrets and gained my sarcasm and strength as a result. So on to more adventures and embarrassing moments I go!!. Wish me well!