When you get to be forty-seven years old, you don’t have the body you used to. Even attempts to get into shape won’t bring back the smooth skin and fluid joints of my youth. I embrace who I am, however, because the nooks and crannies and what lies underneath tells the tale of who I am.
The first time I broke my arm came from falling off the slide on my swing set when I was about five. I seem to recall falling of from somewhere near the top, but those who witnessed the mishap claim I fell off the bottom. It’s funny how small children blow things up to be so much bigger than they are. So much time has passed since then that I can’t remember that I kept breaking my cast riding my Big Wheel all over the neighborhood, but others seem to recall that clearly.
I broke my arm a second time at a 4H meeting at my neighbors house the year between my 5th and 6th grade years. I ran in the house to put down my papers and ran back out. As I exited the sliding glass door, the rug came out from underneath me. The next thing I know, my forehead is striking the brick threshold. While everyone worried excessively about the large goose egg on my face, I kept pointing to and complaining about my arm. Turns out I was right and they were wrong. I will say, as an aside, my mother comforting me afterwards was one of my more enduring memories of her.
I broke my arm a third time riding my bicycle the very last weekend of college. Riding to blow off some steam before finals, I wrecked when I got out of the saddle to peddle up a small rise. When the chain slipped, the sudden increase in momentum of my foot pitched me over to the left where I tried to break my fall with my right hand. Not thinking much of the whole episode, I picked my bike back up and rode the rest of the way back to town. The farther I got, the less my arm would move until I could barely move it at all. I got a ride to the hospital once I was home. While there, they couldn’t tell if it was a break or not. They offered medication to get me through until Monday which I declined because I was a ‘tough guy’. What follows was one of the most miserable two nights of sleep ever. I damn near begged the orthopedist to give me something when Monday finally arrived.
When I was young, we used to have a humongous vacant field called ‘The Weeds’ – a relatively tame moniker consider the growth that existed there. My friends and I were riding there one day when I steered my bike straight into the heart of a ‘stickery bush’ as we used to call them. I was firmly convinced I was going to die from all the blood from all the wounds which, honestly, were only a bunch of minor scratches.
My gnarliest scar comes from another bike wreck I had in high school. Headed home after summer conditioning, I lost my balance climbing a hill and fell into a rusty guard rail slicing my left upper arm. It didn’t bleed much so I didn’t think much about it and therefore did little about it. Little did I know that the really deep ones don’t bleed much and leave the nastiest scars. I’m probably lucky I didn’t tetanus or a similar disease. Did I mention it was my second bicycle wreck of the day?
I used to make fun of Ms. Boss for her ‘finger toes’ when we first got together. First of all, making light of your girlfriend’s toes is not the way to her heart. Second, when you realize that your small stubby toes – which could be best described as looking like pink corn hanging off my foot – are actually the strange ones, you come off looking tremendously stupid.
Both my grandfathers were ‘4F’ during World War II. Fortunately, I inherited by maternal grandfather’s foot problems rather than my paternal grandfather’s heart problems.
I have broken my toes I don’t know how many times. I damn near added to that total last week. Have I mentioned that my forty-seven year-old eyes don’t work at night like they used to?
My strangest ‘blemish’ comes courtesy of an all-day trip to the beach. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I decided to take summer classes at a different school in the South. Some friends of mine called me up and asked me to make the three-hour trip to see them while they were on vacation. I hopped in my car at the time – a 1984 Ford Escort manual five-speed with no air conditioning – and made my down there. I hung my left arm out the window the entire way down, went to the beach, and hung the same arm out the window the whole way back. While I was well aware that I’d had too much sun overall, I couldn’t understand over the next couple of days why my left arm hurt so much more than a sunburn. Finally, during a break at my job washing dishes at a Tex-Mex restaurant, I decided to take a look. It looked like I had glued two lemon jelly beans to my left upper arm. While I felt plenty of pain in that moment, it paled in comparison to the hurting that would come later that evening when they popped. It was years later before I figured out I had a second degree burn because, of course, I didn’t go to the doctor. I’ve got a patch of freckles on my left arm to remind me of the summer of 1990.
My pinky finger looks horribly broken until you hold up the other pinky finger and realize it’s a mirror image of the first. You can blame my parents for that one, I was born that way.
One of my bottom front teeth is stained horribly yellow. On some level, you can blame my mother for that one, but I am actually very fortunate on another level. Some of the children of mothers who took the same ‘safe’ medication for morning sickness came out a lot worse off than I did.
My left thumb carries a constant reminder that that saws shouldn’t be used in place of a file.
If you look carefully enough at my right wrist, you can see what happens when your oven mittens aren’t quite big enough to pull dinner out of the oven.
I’ve had psoriasis since I was a kid. It moves from place to place on my body, goes away and comes back. The one spot it almost always remains is the heel of my right hand.
My forty-eight year old cousin sports a small pox immunization scar on his arm. Born fifteen months later, I escaped that one.
My lone nagging sports injury comes from wrestling practice. My practice opponent, new to the sport and strong as an ox, lifted me off of my feet during a take down. As the room started spinning around, I heard several of my teammates yelling ‘no’ just before I got body slammed to the floor. Unfortunately, my opponent learned that there’s quite a difference between ‘wrastling’ on TV and wrestling in high school fifteen seconds too late for my left shoulder. I was out for several days and never got it looked at, but it still hurts a little if I sit in the same spot for too long.
If you look closely enough at my senior pictures, you’ll see that one of my eyes is the tiniest bit swollen courtesy of a drill during wrestling practice earlier that day. I do believe my sisters enjoyed putting makeup on their brother to cover the shiner just a tad too much that evening.
I injured my ankle during my senior year. Honestly, I can’t remember how I did it, but I do remember begging my parents to take me to the hospital to get it looked at certain that it was broken. Several days later, they relented only to discover that they were correct and it was only a sprain. Years later as a parent, I still think of this situation when faced with ‘go/no go’ hospital decisions with my own children.
The skin under my wedding ring is as pale as it can be. It’s a half inch wide and I never take it off.