Most people are accident prone. Some are wont to go falling down the stairs because they trip over themselves, or they get their hands or fingers caught in car doors or other things that swing shut. Me? I have a tendency to bang my head, and it's not from listening to Quiet Riot either.
I was at a job site performing a service on an ATM. (one of the many things I do during my waking hours) It was a drive up ATM. When you open it up, the top part flips up like a hood. The terminal, that controls the ATM (resets, shuts it down, etc.) swings out of the hood and basically points straight down at the ground.
Next I opened the safe and was in the processing of clearing a jam from the machine. It never fails that people will stick “non-monetary” things into an ATM. I guess they, as a kid, always put their peanut butter sandwich into the VCR, or tried to insert a floppy diskette into a CD drive, and never really learned the lesson that “you can't do that.” After extracting what looked like a grocery list, I examined the rest of the machine.
I had to squat down to see the underside of the machine, looking for other things that have jammed, maybe some real money or a nice check. Finding no treasure, I stood up not realizing that the terminal was directly above my head. So, my crown found a nice sharp corner of the terminal to smack. Reeling in pain and rubbing my head furiously, I danced around the ATM like an Indian praying for rain. I'm sure the public, looking to use this particular ATM, saw me and considered me a security risk and stayed away.
I pulled my fingers away and noticed that, yes, I was bleeding. Not gushing as much as the typical teenager who gets killed off in a Rob Zombie movie, but it was bleeding. Then I started to black out. I looked at the open safe and thought to myself, “This would be hilarious. Me passed out with the safe open. People trampling my unconscious body in an effort to get free money. Kind of a like a reverse bailout.” Then I thought, “Well, it would be bad for the bank and I'd end up sitting by the roadside holding a sign that said, 'DO NOT GIVE ME MONEY, I WILL LOSE IT (instead give me something solid, such as your unfinished taco salad).'” I forced myself to focus, and though I still felt blood seeping through my hair, I managed to finish what I had started to do, got the safe door shut, locked and everything working again.
I had a nice mountain on my head and a couple of days of pain. But I survived. My friends have begged me to get a helmet, a hard hat even, but I'm too proud and really, not much of a story being safe.
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