Why I’m not Spiderman

It’s a good thing I bought travel insurance. Last week, on Monday night, technically Tuesday morning, I spent some quality time at the SOS International [Health] Clinic. The reason why? I thought I was Spiderman.

I arrived home on Monday night at about 11:30pm to find that our padlock had been locked on the inside of our gate instead of the outside. There was no way for me to access the padlock other than by getting someone who was already home to unlock it for me. I tried waking up the landlord. I pounded on his door a few times. I also tried in vain to call my roommate but to no avail. I was locked out of my apartment.

Instead of going to another friend’s house, I decided that I could climb the gate, the 7 feet high gate. I had seen my friend from work, my friend who is 6’2”, climb over the gate so I thought I could do the same. As most of you know, I’m a fairly independent person and I’m all about equal opportunity. Whatever a boy does, I can also do…most of the time. This time, I underestimated.

(This is where the gruesome part starts so if you’re sensitive about blood and all that good stuff, stop reading now.) With one leg over one side of the gate and the other leg on the other side, my leg got caught, impaled really, on the sharp metal spike on top of the gate to prevent burglars from breaking in. It’s such a relief to know that it’s effective.

So, there I was impaled on the gate, my leg bleeding profusely. And I did what every person in this type of situation does – I panicked and called for help, which ended up waking up the entire neighborhood. I had all my Cambodian neighbors running out to see what the commotion was about. At first they all thought I was a burglar. That impression was easily corrected as I writhed in pain on top of the gate. Then, with the assistance of my landlord and another neighbor, I was finally able to get my leg pulled off the spike. Of course, this entire exchange happened with my neighbors who speak very limited English.

Four stitches later, I am almost good as new and with a story and scar to boot! I get my stitches out tonight. I’m hoping that I don’t get an infection. I won’t go into the details about my visit to the clinic, but needless to say, I don’t recommend getting hurt in a developing country.

For those of you who have asked me why I haven’t posted recently, this is why…I know definitively that I’m not Spiderman.