Thirty years ago this month...
2004-03-09 at 10:13 a.m.
Thirty years ago this month...
I broke my leg. I was seven years old. It was a beautiful pre-spring day and I was out on my street riding my orange bike with the white banana seat.
I was down at the end of my street, riding along the curb, when Mike B. came along on his bike. Mike was a sizable sixth grader. He didn't see me and ran right over me. I fell to the ground, with my left leg tangled in the bars of my bike. Mike's bike then fell on top of me, followed by Mike himself.
I screamed in pain. Denise P!per, a high schooler, came over to see what was wrong. She lifted the bikes off of me and carried me home. As she carried me, I looked up at her red, bushy hair and tons of freckles. I had never seen so many freckles on a person. She even had them on the insides of her lips and ears.
When we got home, I saw my mom on the front porch. I cried, "MOOOOM!" and she took me from Denise. She laid me down on the loveseat in our family room. When she touched my leg, I screamed in agony. My mother incorrectly assumed that because bones weren't jetting through my skin, that the bone couldn't possbily be broken.
She loaded me up into her car (a maroon 1970 Chevelle - we've always been a Che-velle family!) and took me to the emergency room.
The x-ray of my leg fascinated me. My shinbone was twisted - a spiral fracture, the doctor called it - cut in three different places. I had to stay over night after they wrapped me in a hip to toe cast. I was terrifed to stay the night in the hospital without my parents. No one told me what to do in case I needed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, or if they did explain it, I certainly wasn't paying attention. I woke up and forgot where I was and why I was there. I needed to pee, so I swung my big-ass cast over the side of bed and stepped down on my broken leg. I still remember that pain like it was yesterday.
I saw a bed pan on a cart across from my bed and deduced that it would be the perfect recepticle for my needs. I stood on the floor, put the pan between my legs and peed away. Just then a nurse came by and saw what I was doing. Her inexperience with children showed as she screamed, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!" For years, I felt such shame for that, when all I was trying to do was piss.
She scolded me for making a mess (I missed the pan) and for getting out of bed. How was I to know? No one ever told me.
I left the hospital the next day and came home. My mom folded out the sofa sleeper in the living room and that's where I lived for the next four weeks. My dad brought me a set of colored markers so people could sign my cast as they visited. I had autographs covering the entire cast in no time.
Because climbing stairs on crutches terrifed me, I couldn't attend second grade. The school sent a tutor to keep me up to speed with my schoolwork. I hated that woman. I don't remember her name, but I can see her face plain as day. I told her that I hated her and she didn't seem too surprised.
After four weeks, I got my cast taken off. It was replaced by a knee to toe cast with a walking implement on it, that for some reason I wasn't allowed to use. The doctor didn't feel I was able to put weight on my foot yet, so why did he deliberately put me in a walking cast? A mystery that plagues me thirty years later. My mother never allowed me to save any of the casts, fearing that they would smell after awhile.
My favorite part of being stuck at home on a sofa sleeper, was the bag of handmade Get Well cards my class had made for me. I saved the cards for many years, but threw them away as a teenager. I wish I still had them. They were incredible. Lisa L. made me a card with the two of us playing on it. On the back she wrote "Todd Jam!son likes you". The card from Todd J didn't imply that at all, but it was nice to hear. He drew a carrot shaped race car for me. Eric K's card had baseball players all over it, including Lou Br0ck, my favorite Cardinal.
I got such a warm reception when I returned to school, as if I had been off fighting for my country or something, instead of sitting on my ass watching game shows for six weeks.
I cannot believe that was all 30 years ago! It all seems like yesterday...