No, I know exactly where I was when Barbara broke her knee.
It was a Tuesday in July 1996. I think the 23rd because it was a week before the Alice in Chains Live CD dropped, and that was the end of the month.
Anyway, we were parked in the Taco Bell lot. I was in the back seat, Lunchbox was driving, and Barbara was in the passenger seat.
Barb and Lunchbox had just picked me up from work at the Sam Goody, so we got our tacos, ate in the lot, and then we were going to go back to their place to hang out.
Now, Barb was friends was Sellie, who was dating her ex, Ray. They were still friends, though? I don’t know, it was weird.
Anyway, Barb sees Sellie and Ray eating lunch through the open window in the diner across the street.
No, not that diner. That’s on Route 1, there’s no way she would have made it across that. This was the smaller diner off of Franklin, the one that used to be a house. It had better coffee, but the eggs were awful.
Anyway, Lunchbox leaned across Barb’s lap and said, “Yep. They got disco fries too.”
Now, Lunchbox says I said this, and I swear I didn’t, but someone in the car said: “It’d be really funny if you just showed up and started eating their fries.”
Well, Barb gets this look, and says “I’m gonna do it.”
She shoves the rest of the soft taco in her mouth, gets out of the car, and starts running.
She dashes across Franklin, runs over the grass and through the low bushes around the diner straight at them.
And that’s when we see her stumble and launch herself headfirst through their window. All we see is her ass hanging out.
Lunchbox and I are cracking up. We figured she tripped on a branch or something.
No, she whacked her knee on the air conditioning unit that she didn’t see until she had gotten through the bushes.
So she tried to jump it... AND MISSED. Her knee hit the thing, and she went in headfirst.
So she’s hanging in their window, playing it cool, eating their fries.
When she doesn’t come out right away, Lunchbox and I finish our tacos and wander over.
We say hi to Ray and Sellie, and Barb whispers to me (Lunchbox swears it’s to him) that she can’t get down, and she thinks she broke her knee.
So I bend down, pretending to tie my shoes, and her knee is blowing up.
I’m thinking, “Oh shit, she needs to go to a hospital.”
I get up, I say that I’ve got to get home today, and proceed to fireman’s carry Barb out of the diner window, across the street, and into the car.
Lunchbox hustles over, takes one look at her knee, says, “Oh shit!” and heads for the hospital.
We get her there, and sure enough, she broke her damn patella on that AC unit. The whole time she was in this agonizing pain but wanted to sell the joke more than admit to being hurt.
And that, right then, is when I knew that this was the woman I was going to marry.