Second grade was a rather traumatic time for me, physically. I was between the ages of seven and eight and we were living in the little town of Duncan, Oklahoma, at the time. My second-grade teacher was Mrs. Cunningham at Horace Mann Elementary (none of that information matters to the stories, I just like to remember). Two major incidents happened around my second-grade year that basically scarred me for life, physically and psychologically.
Incident #1: the first incident happened on the school playground. We had a domed jungle gym on the playground much like the one in the picture below. It stood roughly 12 feet tall and, to four-foot-tall second graders, it was a skyscraper. Not many had the stomach to climb all the way to the top and sit on the edge of the top ring and dangle their feet. Even fewer had the stomach to sit backward at the edge and then slowly lower themselves backward till they were hanging upside down, hands-free, with their knees hooked over the bar.
One day, I finally mustered enough courage to do just that. All was well. I lowered myself backward, took a deep breath, and let go of the bar. I swung there in free space. What I hadn’t given any thought to was how to get back up from that position. As I reached up for the bar again to pull myself up, my body slipped free from the jungle gym, and I plummeted to the earth. There wasn’t anything soft to break my fall, just the dirt. It was the first time I had the wind knocked out of me. I landed flat on my back. It’s a wonder I didn’t land on my head and break my neck. I sat up on my knees, gasping for breath. One of the playground monitors came running over to attend to me. When I was finally able to breathe again, she asked me if I was ok. I mean…my back hurt but I could breathe again so I guess I’m ok, right? She dusted me off and sent me on my way. No “let’s go see the nurse” or “let’s take it easy”. In true GenX fashion, I never told my parents even though I remember my back hurting for not only the rest of the day but for several days. That didn’t stop me from trying the same stunt again, though, after the pain went away. Years later, I looked up what that back pain could have been, and turns out I probably had a minor herniated disc. I’m nearly convinced that my lingering lower back pain throughout my life is related to that incident.
Incident #2: Later that year, I contracted chicken pox. And not just a mild case. I had the mother of all cases. Even my pediatrician was amazed. I had them EVERYWHERE. All over my body, in my ears, in my nostrils, on my eyelids, between my fingers and toes. I was plagued for nearly a week and a half. I missed two weeks of school. A good portion of my days was spent in the bathtub with a warm oatmeal bath (my Star Wars action figures and ships spent a lot of time in the water) and when I wasn’t in the bathtub I was covered in pink Caladryl. I remember being totally miserable.
I still have three very prominent scars on my body several of the bigger sores: one on my chest, behind one of my ears, and one on my leg. For some strange reason that still eludes us to this day, my sister, who is six years younger than me, thought it looked like great fun to have chicken pox and tried everything in her power to infect herself. She drank after me, used utensils after me, anything and everything she could figure out to do. I remember the grin on her face when my parents found the beginnings of sores on her stomach. And while her case wasn’t nearly as severe as mine, it didn’t take her long to realize that chicken pox wasn’t as fun as she had seemingly built it up to be in her mind.
Be the first to comment