Just back from lunch (yes, it was very good, thank you--blackened catfish, green beans & broccoli) with my pretty wife and we got to talking about our youngest's run-in with the ground yesterday, and both of us, it seemed, had been mulling over what all COULD have happened--concussions, brain injuries, no little blue eyes--but thankfully DIDN'T happen. As we sat there, I suddenly remembered something that happened in my childhood.

Paternally-derived genetical predisposition to dare-devilry apparently explains a lot of my child's behavior.

From the time I was about 5 to when I was 9, I had something called Legg-Perthes disease, which causes the head of the femur to flatten out. (Not only does it affect humans, it also afflicts small canines. Go figure.) The treatment for this way back then (and now) was to keep the affected leg raised up off the ground with a fixed leg brace to allow the femur to regrow. When I didn't have on the leg brace, I was on crutches, holding up my left foot a few inches off the ground.

Despite the fact that I was what we now call "differently-abled" (and back then was just a plain old crippled), I never really slowed down very much. I could run on crutches about as fast as any of the other kids, and could make pretty good time even with a leg brace (although I had an odd sort of Herman Munster-looking gait). I could go up and down stairs, get in and out of cars and just about anything else. One day I decided to see if I could run downhill.

Our old house sat at the bottom of a steep slope. Up top in the rear was the driveway where we parked, and it was as high as the roof of the house. Now, this was not impressive height--the house, after all was just your normal post-war bungalow, so the top of the roof was probably no more than about 15 feet high. What it lacked in height was made up for in steepness, though. Did I mention it was steep?

At the time, I thought I could use my crutches and run down the hill and catch myself on the little area close to the house that flattened out for about five feet as it led up to where the sidewalk was. I don't know why I thought I could do this.

So then, we have Me, a chubby child of about 7 or 8, standing high upon the edge of the asphalt driveway, peering across the roof of the house and down the slope toward the dark green cedar shake siding on the back of the house, with visions of I'm not sure what running through my head. At last the time came and I launched out on two crutches and one leg (the other leg held ever so daintily up from ground to promote healing), down the 60 degree slope.

I made it just fine all the way to the bottom, with the jumble of golden ash sticks flailing mightily to keep up with my forward momentum. I was home free until I hit that part that flattened out. I kept going down at the same slope, but the ground didn't. However, I didn't just corkscrew into the ground--I was sufficiently close to the house that I was able to maintain some forward speed and smacked my whole face onto the rough cedar shakes and the iron water spigot sticking out of the wall, right under the kitchen window. Gosh, hadn't seen THAT there. (Not that it would have made a difference.)

The underside of my nose, right beside the septum, just below the nostril, grazed the handle of the spigot, and in concert with the wall of the house, slowed me sufficiently so that I came to a nice, dazed stop crumpled onto the sidewalk. After a second, I realized I was a) still alive, and b) probably going to catch hell for this, and c) bleeding from under my nose, and d) gonna REALLY be in trouble. I didn't dare cry, or I would have been found out, so I hobbled inside (still managing to keep my left foot up off the ground) and grabbed a wet paper towel. Sometime afterwards, I finally told my mom what I had done. "I don't guess you'll do that anymore, will you?" "No ma'am."

And I haven't.

Although I do feel sort of bad that I managed to pass this peculiar trait along to my little baby.
posted by Terry at 1:27:00 PM