Friday, April 3, 2009

There is a God after all...

...Oh alright, perhaps that is going a bit far.

Nevertheless, a miracle has happened.

After a sleepless night, I went to my favourite computer palace which is full of lovely young geeky boys, who have somehow avoided the stereotypical "the customer is always wrong" behaviour which is beaten into everyone else with a business here.
One of them removed my battery and leaned on my starter for a couple of minutes to drain off any remaining charge. Then he plugged me in, and "Lo, let there be light", and there was!

When the speaker had fallen on the laptop, it had landed exactly in the middle of the keyboard, and the keys must have absorbed the energy of the fall. No lasting damage...

I hope the same can be said for me.
The girl who head-buts came into the music lesson in the morning , for the last five minutes. She took off her socks amicably, came to where I was sitting on the floor playing the Indian harmonium and took my hands off the instrument, holding them to her feet. I stood up and told her that the lesson was over, and in a lightning strike she had my left fore arm just behind the wrist between her clenched jaws and gave me quite a nasty bite. When I had prised her off, my fingers were tingling, so I had to go through the rigmarole of declaring the incident as an "accident de travail" in case there are any serious consequences to my hand. This involved reams of paperwork and sitting in accident and emergency for two hours at lunchtime.

It is quite shocking to be attacked out of the blue like that, and it made me think yet again about the "defend yourself" problem. When it is so quick, there is no time for anything but automatic reflexes to function. Violent retaliation, I am pleased to say, is not one of my reflexes. However, she should know better than to attack a singer, because we are professional voice users. She wont forget that shouting in a while!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hope you are ok, apparently a human bite is one of the worse things to happen to you and is often underestimated. You will grafeful for that 2 hour wait if it heals without problems.

Dingo said...

You know, the biting thing is bad enough but she also touched you with her feet! Ewwwww!

Zhoen said...

Oh, man. Tis the week to get bitten.

I only had a couple of hits when I worked with patients, but near daily near misses. The one with the long fingernails that scratched me was the most disturbing.

Rosie said...

jacqui, I am fine today...my hand hurts but only cos I'm learning a new piano part.
dingo, she seemed to be interested in the colour of my hands compared to her feet- dont ask-
zhoen, at least now you just have to keep an eye on your colleagues

Dick said...

My pal Jacqui was headmistress of a school for kids with severe learning difficulties and she bore scars from three decades of such close encounters. She always said that, whilst the injuries healed soon enough, the shock of the violence never quite receded. Sympathies by proxy from Jacqui, then! And directly from me...

Rosie said...

Dick, yes it is the shock of violence, the ultimate invasion of body space which is so disturbing.
I am having trouble getting it out of my mind. I expect everyone says that about their first bite!
The next one will probably be easier...

Lucy said...

Hooray for the Erwann's of Gigahertz! But not for the butting biter...aggression of any kind, even from a non-human, is a real shock to the system, on many levels. One wonders about people who live with it on a regular basis.

Marie-Helene enjoyed showing the class the photos of your gig with Etienne on her wee camera!

hexe said...

Ouch! Hope the bite has healed. When I worked with the mentally ill, I always felt on guard just because you didn't know. Enjoy your job but be careful.

meggie said...

OH! The hideous pain. I have no idea how I would have reacted! But I am sure it would not have been in a good way!

LeftCoastLobstah said...

Ugh, that's awful. I hope it heals well and that if you see her again you are prepared.

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