Broken Bones
Before turning into Herman Munster, I’m trying everything, which includes caveman torture
I’m writing to you today lying flat on my back with a belt strapped across my forehead and a vice-grip clamped to the back of my neck. Scientists call this “aging gracefully,” which is Latin for “old as dirt.”
If we’re going to stick with the exquisite medical terminology, the reason I’m in the “casket position” on this table is because doctors say I must have experienced “high-level trauma” at some point in my life. Except I didn’t, assuming you exclude the trauma of parenting three children and a miniature horse. Well that and breaking my right arm three times and my left arm twice – all before the age of 7. No kidding.
I fell off a toilet. Again, not kidding. The towels were in a cabinet above the loo, and it turns out a kid emerging from a bath, soaking wet, should not climb a porcelain Slip N Slide to grab a towel. We didn’t have cell phones, much less camcorders, back then, but I’d imagine the scene would have gone viral. I landed back in the tub, with my brittle, right arm breaking the fall – and itself.
I also fell off a trampoline because neighborhood pretty boy John Schreckengost wanted to show off to all the neighborhood pretty girls that he could do a back flip. He told me to back up, and then back up some more, and then back up four feet to the ground where, again, my arm broke the fall – and itself.
Twice I broke my arm playing tackle football in the front yard, but I made the tackle both times – once on the street curb, which happened to be out-of-bounds, and the other on the sidewalk, which happened to be the 50-yard-line. There were no flags for late hits back then, and medical professionals had not yet invented the word “concussion.”
The last break happened in the creek behind our home. My older brother, Paul, was probably 10 at the time, which means I was seven. He and his friend got a running start and jumped clear across that creek – maybe the most astounding athletic feat I had witnessed at that point in my budding life.
Now I’m not sure if you’ve been around a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old (which is about the same age as our two sons), but let me tell you about the world of difference in physical abilities between the two. One could reach a cabinet above the toilet and grab a towel; the other would need to climb the porcelain stool.
I don’t recall how much of a running start I got in my attempt to match the feat, but I do know it wasn’t enough, which became painfully clear when I didn’t even sniff the opposite bank and landed on one of your standard-fare red bricks lodged in the creek bed. Again, my untrusty arm broke the fall – and itself.
I remember climbing out of the creek holding my arm, which I couldn’t particularly feel at the moment, and sitting down at the base of the biggest oak tree in our yard. I knew what I had done, and I knew what was coming next. A trip to the ER where a doctor would “set” my broken bone. If you’ve never had a broken bone set by an orthopedic surgeon, just think back to a time when you grabbed a stick and snapped it over your knee. Now pretend your arm is the stick.
After we got home from the hospital that night, Dad walked up to my side with what I now believe was a smile in his eyes.
“Jonathan, you know if you break your arm again, the doctor may have to cut it off.” He was kidding. I think.
I haven’t broken an arm since, but I’m a broken man lying on this table, where a machine believes I am Stretch Armstrong. On the other side of a curtain, a fearful woman is going through the same treatment while saying the most horrific things. I promise this is what she said:
“Do you remember how they used to torture people in the old days?” she asked an attending physical therapist. “You know how they would chain their arms and legs and start pulling until (GRAPHIC CONTENT COMING) they ripped in two? That’s what I think of when I get on this machine.”
I’m having my spine decompressed because doctors say I need to have three vertebrae fused in my neck and another two fused in my lower back, which is Latin for “Herman Munster.” At some point in life – maybe falling off a toilet, or tackling a sidewalk, or trying to jump across the Grand Canyon, or playing basketball for hours on end – I apparently cracked two small bones in my back that never healed. And before I let the medical establishment ruin my already horrific golf game, I’m trying everything including caveman torture.
Maybe I should have been a bit more careful as a kid.
Oh, who am I kidding? That’s nonsense. This world needs more kids with broken bones.