Me and a Deer

I have not been professionally published very many times in my life and probably my favorite was when I had a letter to the editor printed in MS magazine in 1994. As you can see, it was in response to a review of the movie "The Lion King." I was amazed they published it at all - it must have been a slow month for letters - but probably the biggest thrill was when I got the call from the magazine asking permission to print it. It was just cool. I also had a letter that I wrote to an author when I was a teenager printed in her follow-up book, but since she changed the names, it's not quite the same and thus I can't really prove it's me other than I still have her original letter back to me and it's pretty close to what she said in the book. And I'm not reproducing it here because it's so completely awful in its teenage angst. Trust me. Besides, that Lion King letter is embarrassing enough.

Anyway - where I started to go with this is that my publishing experiences outside of letters have been less than rewarding as they involved the editor of the local paper not really getting where I was going with an article and instead of working with me on it, just changing it to suit what he THOUGHT I was trying to say. Very frustrating, especially since these were not articles reporting on events, but instead just me telling the story of my experience. One was about going to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland in 1995 and included talking about being less than ten feet from Richard O'Brien at a bar, which to anyone who has seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show (preferably multiple times and NOT on video because that's just...wrong) should be nothing less than amazing. Apparently he hadn't seen it or just didn't care. Frustrating. The second one I'll get to shortly, but I just want to first point out that you'd think I would've kept copies of these issues of the paper even if I wasn't happy with how the articles ultimately came out. I didn't. Which is weird since I have school notebooks dating all the way back to 5th grade. Because you never know when those might come in handy!

The reason I bring any of this up is that I have had occasion to tell the story detailed in the second article a couple of times recently and it is still funny, so I figured I'd put it down here where I can't lose it since we all know the internet is forever (and if you want proof, click here). I do wish I had that original article to work off of, even though it got edited in a way I didn't like. The original title I gave it was "Me and a Deer." I was riffing off the Tori Amos song, "Me and a Gun," but, much like Rocky Horror, the editor didn't get it, so took out the quote that I used ("You can laugh, It's kind of funny, things you think at times like these") AND changed the title to something awful like "The Night My Deer Radar Failed." In hindsight, it may not have been as clever as I thought at the time since it IS a song about rape and all I did was crash into a deer. But this was pre-internet so no one was rushing out to look up the whole song and I truly only quoted that one small part. And no, I haven't given anything away by telling you I crashed into a deer, I promise.

So, yeah, summer of 1996 back in New Jersey. I was rehearsing a production of "Taming of the Shrew" (awful) in a town probably 30-45 minutes from where I was living at the time, which meant I was driving a lot. But then again, in NJ everyone drives a lot. As a frequent driver in the more wooded, suburban areas of the state, I prided myself on my "deer radar" - knowing where there's one there's more, times you should really slow down, areas where you're likely to see them, that kind of stuff. Rehearsal ended fairly early as I recall - it was still light out being summer and all, but not even getting into twilight time yet. I left the high school where the rehearsal was and started making my way back toward the highway. As I slowed down to make a left turn, I saw a quick flash of brown to my left and suddenly my whole windshield exploded in my face. I screamed, threw my hands in front of my face, and jammed on the brakes. I think this was probably where the Tori Amos quote came in because even though all this happened in the span of probably less than five seconds, it seemed to also take forever and all kinds of crazy shit went through my head, none of which I remember now but I'm pretty sure the actual Tori Amos song was part of it.

I don't know exactly what happened next or how I ended up out of my car sitting on the side of the road, covered in blood and surrounded by people, a couple of whom were also previously at rehearsal. I think I might have told someone to go back to the school and tell them, it's possible. The deer was also nearby on the side of the road and one of the other actors told me very firmly not to look. The police came and ended up shooting the deer, which was fairly awful. The ambulance also came and took me to the hospital. The director of the show followed in her car so that I would have someone with me. Once at the hospital, the staff ascertained that I didn't have any actual serious injuries, just lots of small cuts on my head from the windshield glass. They advised me to flip my head over when I got home in the shower so that said glass wouldn't go down my back and cut me more. Wait, what? They weren't going to clean me up there? They were just going to send me home looking like Sissy Spacek at the end of "Carrie"? (remember that, btw, it's important) Yes. Yes, they were. But first they insisted that I call my apartment and make sure someone was home. Why? I don't know. Clearly their concern for my well being didn't extend to preventing me from potentially lacerating my back in my own shower by helping me get cleaned up.

So, I called my roommate, Anna, and told her what had happened, reassured her I was fine, and explained that I had to make sure she was home. Here is how the rest of the conversation went:

ANNA: I'm home...but you might want to go to your parents' house instead.

ME: Why?

ANNA: We don't have any power.

ME: What?

ANNA: We don't have any power. The house is completely dark.

ME: I don't care. I just want to come home.

ANNA: Ummm...okay.

I took my bloody self out of the hospital and the director drove me home. By the time we got there, my muscles had really stiffened up and I was moving very slowly both from the pain and from a desire to not dislodge the approximately gajillion shards of glass embedded in my hair. Our apartment was the third floor of an old Victorian house and I gingerly crept up the dark steps, trying not to touch anything as I was covered in blood. I opened the door and looked down the long hallway. Because of the power outage, Anna had lit candles. A lot of candles. Candles on every surface. More candles than I knew we owned. And conveniently, the whole thing was captured on film:

Fortunately, Anna was NOT waiting behind a door with a knife and thus I did not have to bust out my telekinetic powers and do THIS:

I also did not burn the house down. Which I think was nice of me. I DID take my upside down shower and probably ate some dinner. And so life went on.

It's funny as I try to think back on that original newspaper article how little of it I can remember. I don't know if I even brought up the whole Carrie and the candles thing. But I know if I did, it wasn't as fun as doing it this way. Which is why I now self publish. You're welcome.