Chapter 22 - My Life: The Skating Pond

 

In case you haven't figured it out by now, I liked to stay physically active when I was a kid.  I always preferred to be outdoors than inside.

This picture is of a small pond that was...oh probably only about a mile away from the house.  You'll have to use your imagination here since I took this picture in July.  I need you to imagine it's winter.  And another thing, now that I'm sharing these stories with you, I'm beginning to see a pattern here...perhaps winter was not a good time for me.  

So, it's winter...snow on the ground and the pond is frozen...frozen so solid that it was safe to skate on!  Hurray!!!  Watch out Dorothy Hamil...here I come!  We'd walked down to the pond and began skating just like always.  Well, there was one of those teeny weeny bumps on the ice and the toe of my figure skate caught it just right!  Down I went flat on my side and we all laughed so hard!!



But, as I rolled over on my "keester", there was some serious pain in my right arm and my cousin had to help me up.  YUCK!  Severe pain always makes me feel sick to my stomach and we had to walk a mile before we got home.  Thank goodness it wasn't uphill!

So we walked home while I tried to gently brace my arm, holding my left hand under it.  I was wearing my favorite rabbit fur parka and noticing that I had torn one of the pelts, I knew I was going to be in trouble.  It was my favorite jacket!!  Yep...I was worried about the trouble I was going to get into for this one.  I mean, lets face it, in the past year, I had landed in a pile of boulders, split my shin on an axe and now THIS!!

My Aunt wanted me to go upstairs as usual to take off my jacket and change.  However, when I told her that my arm hurt so bad that I couldn't stand the weight of the jacket on my arm let alone pull the jacket off, she  changed her mind and helped me out of the parka.  And there it was...my right arm...just dangling.  However, the section from your elbow to your wrist wasn't straight...it was S-shaped!!

They decided to by-pass the doctors and take me right to the Emergency Room this time.  I do remember how cool it was once they shot me up with a numbing agent.  I watched intently as they pulled the bones forward and slide them back into place!!  I was actually watching the bones (yes, Laura, BONES!) moving around on a screen next to the bed.   Then just like always, off I went to my classes at UConn.  No crutches this time...just a cast.  The teachers still were not happy.

Some people are just so hard to please!