With the upcoming release of the new Indiana Jones movie, my memory swims with a day about 27 years ago, when Raiders of the Lost Ark was just out in theaters. When I say that my memory swims, I really mean that the two or three actual memories I have of this day have become interconnected with the many times told story so that I have a full color feature length film of the events in my mind and it flows along swimmingly.
At the same time that Indy was stealing golden idols in South America and fighting the Nazi's in Egypt, my father was building an enclosed porch on the side of our house in St. Anthony, Idaho. He had built the basic frame, including the floor joists and roof trusses. My brother and I were "helping" in the way that all kids want to help their dad's, which usually means that the work goes slower and the nails are far more crooked.
When Indiana Jones had taken the golden idol from it's weight sensitive pedestal and the huge round boulder chased him through the corridors, he came to a deep and deadly pit of despair. He had to use his whip to grab a branch and swing across to the other side. My older brother had tied a rope to one of the roof trusses and was swinging from board to board, ala Indiana Jones. Meanwhile, I was sitting on a board that would become the outer wall of the porch, looking in toward the house with my back to our yard.
Don pulled far back on his rope/whip and swung with all his might! He swung straight towards me and angled up directly over my head. I was in awe of his bravado and watched him with eyes and mouth gaping! I leaned back as he swung higher and felt the wind rush as he flew past. The wind rushing past was not created by my brother's swing, but instead, by my falling off the porch! I had leaned back much too far and was now toppling over straight toward the ground, about 3-4 feet away.
I must have started to put my hands behind me to catch my fall, but the hard ground caught me first. My left elbow was the first to hit the hard ground, pinned behind me with the back of my left hand in the small of my back. If you ever seen a UFC fight, this position is called a 'chicken wing' or kimura arm lock where the arm is bent at the elbow twisted behind one's back in the shape of a chicken wing and pressure applied until the sad recipient tap's out. I was the sad recipient and did not have the chance to tap out. Instead, by bones chose to tap out, or rather snap.
You have two bones in your forearm that run parallel to each other. In my arm, these two bones popped out and broke right in the middle. It was a 'green' break, which means that the bones did not break clean in half, they splintered the same way a green stick would splinter instead of snapping in two. Yum!
My next memory was sitting on our kitchen counter. I looked down at my left arm, which was across my lap. It didn't look like my arm at all. It was HUGE! It looked like Popeye's, with his bulging forearms. I can almost see it, with an anchor tattooed to my ever swelling appendage, a can of spinach in my right.
Mom belted me into the middle of the backseat, which is where I always had to sit anyway since I was the youngest. You would think that she would at least let me sit by the window, now that I was injured, but noooo! I had a large Ziploc bag full of ice wrapped around my arm and a towel on top of that. Off to the emergency room!
I have no memory of the emergency room, but I know I was awake when the doctor POPPED my bones back in place and quickly wrapped up my arm for casting. Mom says I screamed as she held me down. She was much braver than I was. On the way home, I was strapped into the middle of the backseat, again. I never get to sit by the window! We did go through the McDonald's drive-thru and I excitedly showed the cashier my new cast! She said 'WOW!" I got a Happy Meal and realized that my cast made me extra special now. It also gave me a built in weapon!
My cast went from the middle of my upper arm all the way to my hand, holding my elbow at a 90 degree angle. It was bridged between my thumb and fingers, and my fingers were free to move. It was the old plaster casts and I could not get it wet. I had to take baths with my arm wrapped in a plastic bag, and sit it on the side of the tub. It itched like nobody's business and I scratched inside it with a chopstick. My now Orthopaedic Physician's Assistant Certified sister is appalled at the fact that I was allowed to scratch inside my cast and has told me of all the possible damage the could have been done. Nothing bad happened to me, but she has some other mighty scary stories of casts gone bad, if you ever want to hear. The one with the earwigs was the last one I would let her tell me. I just can't deal with crawly stuff like that.
So here I am, 4 years old with a hard plaster cast on my left arm. I quickly learn that no one wants to be hit with this massive beast and I set out to exact some revenge on my brother and sister for their continual reminders of me being the youngest, smallest and weakest. Now I felt much stronger, much larger and not nearly as defenseless.
I had to keep my cast on for an entire 6 weeks. I do remember when the doctors took it off. I recall this very clearly. Let me digress for a moment so you can truly understand why I recall this event so clearly. My father worked in the logging industry and used a chainsaw everyday. I was very familiar with the sounds, smells and effects of such a machine. I knew that in a matter of seconds, a chainsaw could cut through an entire tree, and skin every branch off it's trunk without any exertion or effort. To me, the sound of a chainsaw meant cutting all the way through and cutting off.
As I sat in the doctors office, he proceeded to turn on his cast saw. Though not nearly as large nor foreboding as my fathers chainsaw, a chainsaw is all I could see in his hands. I saw this man in white holding a chainsaw over me, ready to cut off my arm! This was far more terrifying than anything I had yet experienced in my life.
Was he really going to cut my arm off?! My mom is sitting next me, is she going to do anything!? He's getting closer! It's so loud!! AAAHHHH! My arm!! No! Don't cut my arm off!!
Oh. Hey. He didn't cut my arm off. Oh. Well. Almost lost my cool for a second there. Phew!
After removing the decrepit old cast and unwrapping everything, I glimpsed what used to be my arm. I say used-to-be because the last time I had seen my arm it looked like Popeye's arm and didn't look like my arm then either. I had not seen my real arm for over 6 weeks, and I did not see it now. All I saw was a sad, atrophied, gray, limp, skin and bones appendage that surely did not belong to me. The layers of dead skin were thick and smelled like old people.
I've been told that it took weeks more for my arm to start looking alive again. I've also been told that since I now longer had my weapon, my brother and sister went back to their old ways of torture.
So there it is. For the second time in my short life, my brother's decisions put me in mortal danger. I could have fallen farther backward and landed on my head and broken my neck. I do not blame by brother, for he was only trying to be a brave hero, just like Indiana Jones. And even though Indy's example was almost my downfall (pun intended) I still want to be just like him when I grow up.
Moral of the story: When swinging for your life over your own pit of despair, watch out for the ones below who are looking up to you!
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