Ah, the value of an education. We don’t value it anywhere near enough these days but I can tell you, school was a real lifesaver for me.
Although I can’t recall my precise age, it wasn’t a lot. Perhaps second or third grade range sounds about right. Back then I had a neighbor, named Freddie Moskowitz, and something about the kid offended my sensibilities. So much so that one day I found myself pursuing him with the intent of doing bodily harm.
You’ll recall the earlier letter in which I described how my new bicycle and I performed an aerial 360 degree rotation while descending a hill? That’s the hill where Freddie had his home and this time I was on foot. I was pursuing him as fast as my stubby feet could propel me and he was staying just ahead of my wrathful embrace. Since the slope of the hill pointed toward my house and away from his, I must assume he aimed towards mine in order to tell on me to my mother and have her call off her rage-filled son.
He got all the way to my front door, where the psychic dread of entering someone else’s house must have overcome him. And so he turned to face me.
Picture it. A stationary Freddie facing me as I was charging directly down upon him. My fist had already formed and had been pulled back behind my ear. Two more steps and it was flying forward, straight toward Mitchell’s insipid face. Take that, Freddie!
Except for the fact that just before any impact could occur, Freddie took a quick step to his right, taking him completely out of my fist’s trajectory.
However, as we learned with the bicycle, momentum can be a bitch. And so my fist continued unabated in its path.
Well. It so happened that my father had installed a storm door in front of the actual front door. And, it being summer, the main door was wide open but the storm door wasn’t. This was in the bad old days of decidedly non-safety glass. And entire door of thin, very shatter-happy glass.
Although I was young and my fist wasn’t all that impressive as a generalized weapon of mass destruction, it, along with the attached arm, was enough to drive right through that nasty old glass pane.
I don’t know what happened to Freddie at that point, I suspect he took off the moment he heard the crash. I wasn’t really paying attention, my interest instead having been fully engaged by the noisy impact and its aftermath.
It was here that education came to my aid. I was staring, first at the jagged hole I’d made in the door glass and then at the shards of glass littering the ground. Yet when I cast my gaze upon the top of my wrist, I saw it was entirely unharmed. Yay!
And then … I recalled hearing from my teacher that little boys and girls shouldn’t play with broken glass because broken glass could cut you. Clearly her warnings weren’t relevant to the top surface of my wrist but what about the other side? And so, with this thought in mind, I rotated my forearm to bring the underside into view.
I’m sure you all know that when the ancient cultured Greek wanted to cut the bounds of this earthly sphere, he would often draw a warm back, slit his wrists with a sharp knife, and slowly fall into the endless dark sleep. Because, of course, a rather important artery runs down toward the hand in that area, right close to the skin’s surface, in fact.
For those interested in anatomy, it’s known as the radial artery.
Well, what I saw when I turned my hand over was a beautifully clean incision, one that didn’t go laterally like that Greek’s “let’s leave this mortal coil” cut but up and down. Amazingly, it missed even nicking the artery, and instead unzipped my skin for a length of six centimeters. Lest you scoff “how can he remember THAT?!” it’s because I just measured the scar.
I noted, somewhat dispassionately, that it looked like the steaks my father would cook on the grill. Lots of rich red specked with white globs of fat. Dripping a fair bit of that rich red stuff on the floor as well.
And here’s where my schooling again came into play. We’d been told that it’s important to tell your parents whenever you’ve been hurt and I deduced that this likely qualified as “being hurt”. So I opened the now highly non-stormproof door and went to find my mother. I found her upstairs, standing next to the kitchen door and gabbing on the phone.
Being an experienced mom, she ignored me at first. Only when I tugged on her skirt did she turn slightly and start to wave me off. But before she could finish her wave she noted my wrist, lifted up for her inspection.
Her eyes widened. She screamed. And at that point, things began to move quickly. Before I knew it I was in the back of a police car, sirens blaring, being whisked to the hospital. Again, this was in the olden days, before a team of medics descended upon you after a 911 call. Also before the existence of 911.
No recollection of the arrival and transit to the doc but I do remember him stitching me up. I was very adamant that I wanted to know how many stitches as that seemed like an item of importance to me at the time. The number 15 springs to mind but I wouldn’t swear to it at this point.
I was also concerned that the scar would quickly fade and I’d have nothing to brag about to my classmates. I needn’t have worried …
So there you go, kids. Always go to school and listen to your teachers. You never know when what they tell you might save your life. And leave you with yet one more anecdote in the long running hit series “How I managed to stay alive in spite of multiple efforts at the contrary.”
Nickyitis
Has ELF fully understood our preoccupation with momma cow milk. Maybe not quiiiite yet …
And that’s it for now, sports fans. Any interesting anecdotes you recall from your youth? Be sure and share them here!
Quite a story, Crowden! My mother did something similar that I recall vividly as I witnessed it as a kid. She pushed her hand through a window while opening it and I remember all the blood. Somehow I thought she was angry about something—maybe at me? There must have been a scar, but I don’t remember how many stitches. But I can still picture the scene vividly even after 60+ years.
You got your just desserts.