la Matriarch

I’ve broken my right arm twice in my lifetime. 

Once when I was about 10 years old, all the “big kids” in our neighborhood built a wood platform at the top of a huge tree in the backyard of Timmy and Tammy’s, the twins house we hung out at.  Tied to a branch way above the platform was a real long rope that hung from that tip-top branch, to the ground below.  The game was to stand on the platform in the tree (which seemed about 50 feet off the ground to fradycats like me but was probably really only 15-20 feet from the ground) and grab hold of the rope.  The person at the bottom of the tree grabbed the end of the rope and yanked it away from the tree as far as they could run with it which swung the person hanging on to the rope way out into mid air.  The person dangling from the rope hung on having the time of their life until time to be returned to the platform where they’d eagerly await their next turn.  Well, that’s how the Evil Knievel kids did it.  I, on the other hand, can hardly walk down the stairs of my porch without busting my ass, so this pseudo bungy tree trick was really hard for me. 

I stood on the platform scared to death until all the other children had taken their turns and I could no longer stand the torment I was getting from being such a chicken-shit.  I held the rope as tight as I could and was swung out gracefully over the grass.  It felt wonderful and I really thought I was hot-shit.  I’m not sure if I lost my grip or just forgot to keep holding on, but I fell 15-20 (or 50) feet, landing immediately on my right arm.  I can’t describe the way my dangling broke arm looked but it was fucking gross and freaked me out and I ran for my life, all the way home, leaving behind all my Evil Knievel friends.  I wore a cast for 6 weeks.

A couple years after the Tarzan tree debacle, I was out in the front yard of another friend’s house and we were doing basic cart wheels thinking we were rock stars.  Deciding we needed more of a challenge, my friend placed a short box on the ground that we were to do cart wheels over.  It was sort of like an obstacle course for rock star dummies.  My friend breezed through her cart-wheel-over-the-box but when my right arm hit the ground just beyond the box, it snapped and I collapsed to the ground.  I wore that cast for 6 weeks, too. 

Both times my arm was in a cast, the cast was removed by my father, with a small hand saw.  I was terrified that he’d saw my arm off but both times he sawed through my graffiti’d cast with the carefulness of a brain-surgeon, the blade never touching my arm. 

All these years I’ve always thought that my dad sawed off my cast because he’s a big ole redneck who liked to scare the crap outta me.  But, sometime during the presidential debate on Wednesday night it hit me that my parents probably never had health insurance the entire time I was growing up.  During that time period, my father was a painter and a roofer, working whatever jobs he could find to pay the bills and support his family of 5.  My mother, a stay-at-home mom. 

In hindsight, I’m pretty sure my father would have preferred that my casts be removed by a professional, in a real doctors office, with an instrument designed for cutting in close proximity to your children’s very valuable limbs, rather than in the front yard, braced on God knows what, with something that ought to be used to cut down trees.  But, when faced with the dilemma of sending me back to the doctor for a proper cast removal and bone check versus whatever other important expense he had at the time (food, shelter, etc…), he decided that the some other expense was more important, so he did the best he could to play doctor himself. 

Thank you dad, for being careful with the saw.

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