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parasitegirl Kate L. remembers my full-leg cast from first grade. I had two casts, sequentially. Playing on the jungle gym in my backyard after greasing a pizza pan I had lost my grip and somehow flung myself forward, my leg jamming between two rungs of the jungle gym. In mad pain I made it back to the house and screamed "Ruuuttth" alerting Dean Mommy to the accident. She was a half block away from the house, having just set out on her nightly jog. She turned back and ran to the house.
The x-rays showed that I had spiral cracks in both lower leg bones in one leg (tibia and fibula?) I would need a full leg cast because bending my knee or ankle would pull at the cracks. It was upon hearing the news that I would be less mobile that I started to cry.
The cast slowed me down, but not by much. I ran around on the cast at recess and after school, terrorizing young boys while we all played Cops and Robbers or Boys Chase the Girls. The impact of a cast swung at you probably hurts a great deal. I wonder if they remember, maybe I should friend them on Facebook and ask. I wore through the shoe that had been made for my cast. Dean Mommy glued the left-over tread from the shoe directly to the bottom of the cast...but I started to wear through that as well. I was given a second cast.
I broke that second cast on the jungle gym at school. My father was, understandably, pissed. At this point the doctor decided that I was close enough to the cast removal date that they would just wrap up my ankle and let me limp...and for that time I was slowed down.
Kate has suggested that perhaps the insurance company said something to the effect of "look at what this 6 year old girl is costing us! Just wrap her up and get her out of here."
I was a clumsy child, and preteen, and teen, and adult, but I was also compact and strong in ways that mirror Dean Mommy. By the time I was well into middle school I could tumble down the wooden basement stairs and land hard on the concrete floor and it would elicit a mildly concerned, but not running to the scene to survey the damage, "you ok?" from the Dean. In high school, my accidents often involved quick trips to the emergency room, but only when 100% needed...like when I embedded a jewelers saw deep into my thumb and would need shots.
But the accident I was well known for involved no hospitals. In middle school, our shared childhood images of the evils that lurked in ponds and lakes were highly informed by the leach scene from Stand By Me. By high school I had replaced those leaches in my friends' imaginations.
On Facebook, Kate remarked "I remember that cinderblock accident as if it happened to me. I mean, not really I guess, but whenever I think about horrible, gory, spine-chilling accidents I think Robarts + Lake Wingra + CInderblock lurking quietly underneath the surface"
It wasn't that gory, or spine chilling, but it could have been. It had potential. I was the cautionary tale that almost was, the close-call nightmare that haunt parents at night.
I don't know if Kate was even there for it.
We were a week or so away from graduating middle school. I was dating Jacob S, or flirting and about to date him, or something. I never even kissed him with my mouth open. After the accident and before I went off to camp there had been a close-mouth kiss brought on by talking about a dream he'd had, of all things, about Oklahoma, the musical, and something called the Oklahoma Hello. Musical dork. That kiss, and Oklahoma, would haunt me later.
Jacob was there for sure. I think that Teresa Foster and Lisa McComb were also there. Miles Armstrong might have been there, but perhaps I am confusing my awkward first "boyfriends" They were friends, so it's possible.
We'd walked to Lake Wingra after school, the area with the docks and the paddle boats. It wasn't a destination for any purpose, it was just where our feet took us. It was hot and I decided to cool off. I ran down to the docks, fully dressed, and I performed the sort of super-shallow dive I had perfected up at many summer and many summer cabins.
But, as you can guess from the build-up, it wasn't shallow enough.
At the time I had long hair, like I do now, and was in a phase of wearing half of that hair in front of one eye, Violet Incredible style. When I resurfaced, sobbing from pain, holding my hand to my face, no one had any visual clue that something was wrong or what the noises from me meant.
And then, unable to articulate anything, standing half in the water, I removed my hand and hair from my face and showed my friends. The look of panic they flashed back at me stopped my tears and put me into business mode. In times of panic I can go cold and collected if I have a goal, and now I had one. My first goal was to sooth my friends and get to the nearest house.
My face was bloody, but mostly it was swollen and bumpy. I didn't know what it looked like, but half of my face was now unknown to me. I wasn't touching any face I knew. I'd seen the movie Mask (The Cher raising a deformed young man version, not Jim Carry) and I was familiar with Phantom of the Opera, and to my fingers, this is what my face felt like.
I had hit a cinderblock. I hit something rough and concrete. It impacted one temple and scraped its way down half of my face as the force of my dive pulled me over it. The skin was torn up above my eye and under it, my eye was protected by being in my socket, a facial design aspect I appreciate to this day. Thank you, evolution!
I did not lose consciousness, I did not snap my spine, I don't even have any scars to tell me which side was hit. For weeks people would list off the things that could have happened to me. I am sure that the parents of my friends drilled my cautionary tale into them and that they remember my accident far worse than it was, thus Kate's use of "gory."
Jacob wanted to somehow carry me to his home, admirable and all...but he was a skinny little runt who couldn't have weighed more than me. Teresa or Lisa probably had more raw strength but I insisted that I could walk. I wasn't dizzy, I wasn't light sensitive or insensitive, my head just really hurt to a degree that made sense to me.
By the time we reached the Jacob S home I wanted ice for my face and for people to stop fussing. I hurt. I wanted ibuprofen, but the initial shock had worn off and I didn't think I needed to go to a hospital. I scared the shit out of his family when they saw me. As I've noted, diving accidents that end in broken necks are a huge monster in parental dreams, and untreated concussions no doubt feature in the screams of the mind as well. My childhood friends who have had kids, or will have kids, will no doubt use me once more as a warning.
We washed up my face, which looked bad but nowhere as grotesque as I had imagined it. They contacted my mother and together they went through basic concussion tests. The Dean and I determined that I was probably should be picked up and taken home, but that the hospital wasn't needed. I think the S family were a bit shocked by this.
I ended up with some traumatic looking scrapes and bruises. They had to air out once they'd been cleaned. Once a scab formed I could cover half of my face with my hair and cover my forehead with a bandana. The end of middle school meant a trip to 6 Flags Great America and a school dance...and many memory photos snapped on many camera. For Six Flags I wore the bandana. For the dance, to which I was escorted by Jacob, I managed to get some concealer over my wounds.
I remember the search for my last middle school dance dress. I found a white two-piece dress. The skirt was a white cotton petal skirt, the top was a matching sleeveless white shirt with a jagged edge that slightly exposed my midriff. At the mall I had found a lovely patinaed copper hair-clip to put some of my hair back with, but not too much as I was still hiding my face. I still think about that hair clip.
Jacob and I went to the dance.
That summer we were in the same summer theater group. Stagecoach players went from park to park performing fractured fairy-tales for free to kids. Jacob had gotten me involved with them and my drama bug was sparked and flared, as was my costuming bug.
That summer we were in the same summer theater group. Stagecoach players went from park to park performing fractured fairy-tales for free to kids. Jacob had gotten me involved with them and my drama bug was sparked and flared, as was my costuming bug.
That summer before high school I was also slated to go to Spanish language camp for two weeks for the second summer in a row. Concordia language villages were (and are) pricy summer language emersion programs for middle school to high-school aged kids from all over the country. They create isolated villages in the depths of Minnesota with native speakers of the language you are studying. The funding for the camps is not equal. The Scandinavian and German language camps were pretty swank, while mine, the Spanish village, was fairly scabby, but by the time camp started I wasn't.
I left Jacob, midway through the summer performances, and Dean Mom drove me to Minneapolis to catch the big bus to nowhere. I don't know why I was looking forward to my second year so much, my first year had been a mixed bag. I'd had a cabin full of fighting bitches and had fallen for a guy only to be told "I'd be interested in you, if you were better looking." Ouch.
My second year was very different.
My second year, I was popular with the guys .
My second year garnered the open-mouth kiss.
Part of the emersion camp experience involved having your luggage searched for English language contraband. No radio contact with the outside world, no music, no books...and then we put on our table de nombre, our wooden name tags...and I was Rosa.
My cabin was full of supportive and talkative girls and we spent the nights telling secrets and fears while being able to trust each other in the morning...but it was the boys that I really hit it off with. Camp offers a new life, a speedy increase to the natural pace of friendships and romance, and everything is more dramatic than the world you return to.
Alejandro, Sean (whose camp name I cannot remember) and (eating) Raul and I hit it off. Hell, I hit it off with the cabin. They liked me and I knew it. Boys liked me. Finally! FUN! Flirtation was going on at a level above the goofy guy-friend level of me and Jacob or me and my male buddies back home. Things seemed more romantic. Alejandro, Sean and I became tight friends, despite having just met. My January 2008 entries about going to San Francisco cover this part of my life a bit, as I met up with them in Berkley years later.
Alejandro or Sean had managed to get a radio in and on it we followed the two big events that summer; Baseball and the supreme court Webster case that threatened to overturn Roe vs Wade.
But not all boys are created equal. I fell for Alejandro, not Sean...although I would also kiss Sean years later, and Jacob faded away.. Alejandro and I had been paired up during the dance activities one night and learned the tango, meringue, a little bit of lambada (the forbidden dance) together. I wore a tacky leopard print dress with fringe. How could he resist? He'd asked my name, my real name, and then quoted the Taming of the Shrew to me. How could I resist?
I wore the dress I'd worn to the middle school dance to the mid-week dance...and learned a lesson about blue underwear and white skirts...and my ability to dance...and I got my man.
We held hands at song time, around the fire, whenever we could, and eventually shared our first open-mouth kiss together.
I lived in Wisconsin. He lived in Arizona. I was liberal and he was an active member of the young republicans. It was never going to work.
And, oh..yeah....I had Jacob waiting back home for me. Details. Details. This was more overwhelming than Jacob. This was romance!
I wrote Alejandro a goodbye poem and read it to the whole camp and sobbed. I kissed him goodbye, and sobbed.
I cried my eyes out on the bus to Minneapolis and much of the car-ride home.
I broke the news, no doubt tactlessly, to Jacob. I probably told him I'd fallen in love. I can't imagine how a 14 year old girl would could have made the confession all ok...but goodness knows I fucked it all up, all wrapped up in my own emotions...and I started the months of mix-tapes, messages, and long distance calls with my "love."...until that was torn asunder by the boys I was overwhelmed with my freshman year of high school
As for poor J.S. The story goes that he went to Rebecca's house and once there he cried...Rebecca being the head of all things drama and theater at the high school we'd be going to. Her family was close with the S. family. Rebecca and I eventually learned to respect each other as pupil and teacher, but she was fairly vocal about her dislike of me when other people would broach the topic for the first few years of my high school life. I don't know if it was because of my poor treatment of a young S, but I suspected that it was. I never got on stage in an official production of anything...which may have been due to a lack of acting talent and may not have been. High school theater isn't all about talent, but some of it is. When a peer of mine asked why I hadn't been chosen for the part of a younger sister in something, my having "tits out to here" was also sited as why I wasn't suitable for demure or young roles....but back to the summer before high school.
We spent the rest of the summer trapped together in summer theater...Jacob scratched away at me with increasingly less veiled barbs. I can't remember what prompted it, but a wounded Jacob attacked me verbally one day that summer and I snapped and had to be pulled off of him.
I don't know if it was insty karma, or a grude, or my dramatic failings, but I never did gett on stage in a major high school production. Our high school had major productions, let me tell you...huge sprawling affairs of high talent and cute, sporty boys. Our shows were grander than they should have been. I fought my way into the world backstage. I'd been rejected for costuming tasks, occasionally helping when I could, but I plugged away at the summer drama, the backstage crew at the local theater, and drama classes with Rebecca. My biggest drama role wasn't public, it was backstage, as the asstitant director of our 67 student cast of Oklahoma (which even traveled to another city, but that's another story...one that reveals how much Rebecca had come to understand and begrudgingly like me...although she never trusted me with boys my own age or younger and once even lectured me about flirting with young cast members and making comments about high school boys being too young for the likes of me.)
The major friction of Oklahoma was that Mr. J S was cast as Jud. He and I never made up. Unfortunately for us, poor Jud wasn't dead, he was prickly. From the looks of it, I'd stomped the shit out of his heart instead of simply breaking it. We'd become increasingly passive aggressive and nasty to each other over the years. We were drama enemies. I am sure I wasn't a masterful note-giver after we'd run scenes, but he made a point of not listening...it wasn't pretty. Even Alejandro forgave my youth and fickle nature (after some very nasty letters) but Jacob never would...and never did.
I have a vague memory of passing Jacob in a car when I was back home from college, us making eye contact, and having him grimace and flip me off. I suspect he'd stifle the urge if I ran into him nowadays, but that the urge would still be there.
And thus that summer I learned, lakes and young boys are full of painful objects and you should be careful where you dive.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 12:13 pm (UTC)Truer words never spoken about the 'drama' of High School theater!!
How I am sure it is retold:
Date: 2008-08-13 01:25 pm (UTC)Re: How I am sure it is retold:
Date: 2008-08-13 01:29 pm (UTC)Re: How I am sure it is retold:
Date: 2008-08-13 01:34 pm (UTC)Re: How I am sure it is retold:
Date: 2008-08-13 02:03 pm (UTC)http://www.stevenspiro.com/furniture.htm
Re: How I am sure it is retold:
Date: 2008-08-13 02:18 pm (UTC)I hope Bexx sees this.
She'll wet her pants.
Re: How I am sure it is retold:
Date: 2008-08-13 02:20 pm (UTC)Re: How I am sure it is retold:
Date: 2008-08-13 01:30 pm (UTC)That fucking bitch met some asshole from Arizona.
From Kate L
Date: 2008-08-13 02:31 pm (UTC)And although I was not a HS drama kid myself, I still always thought something was more than a little off about that Rebecca.
J S
Date: 2008-08-13 06:00 pm (UTC)Seriously? Most people, you know, get over these things once they've moved on, especially once they're out of high school. What a prick.
Oh, Miles was there…..
Date: 2008-08-14 08:28 pm (UTC)When if first saw you I thought your gasping cries were laughter – and as I always wanted to belong – I laughed along for no reason – and felt guilty about that for years.
Glad you did not die. Sorry I did not do more to ensure that.
Re: Oh, Miles was there…..
Date: 2008-08-14 09:58 pm (UTC)No one could have done more for me. I dove in. I damaged myself. You guys made sure I got to Jacob's. Unless you had some sort of time gadget you never told us about, you were powerless.
I do remember the laugher, that's why I knew you guys didn't understand what was going on and would need to see my face. It was an understandable reaction to odd noises. I was a joker, expess around Miles and Jacob! You had no way of knowing.