Day 1

[bironic]

What's this?

And thank you to elynittria for the extra icons, so there can be a new one for each day. ♥


1. Elementary School

What I remember of falling through the door is this:

I was eight. It was summer. My mom, my sister and I were playing in the backyard, and at least two of us must have gone in the house for something, because I was coming back outside and the storm door was swinging shut in front of me. I reached out to catch the door before it closed, only my hand hit the glass instead of the metal bar across the middle, and I went straight through it.

I remember reaching out, and then I remember being on my hands and knees on the patio on the other side. I think I was crying. There must have been broken glass all around me.

I remember my mom rushing over and taking me back into the garage, sitting me down, calling our pediatrician. I was staring at a small bleeding cut on the back of my left hand.

I remember riding in the car on the way to the doctor, and my mom saying she was more worried about the cut on my face than the one on my hand. I don't think I'd realized there was one on my face.

I remember lying back on the table at the pediatrician's, the doctor saying we didn't need to go to the emergency room, while my mom and sister watched from the bench in the corner (my mom said years later that it was one of the worst things she'd felt, watching me be stitched up on that table). I remember the sting of the local anesthetic at the top of my nose where the cut was, and the tug of the stitches (four) going in. I don't remember being frightened, only sniffly and maybe a little stunned. I remember the doctor saying there shouldn't be much of a scar. (There is one, but it's pale, a little white slash on the right side of my nose emerging from beneath my glasses nosepad.)

I remember that afterwards, my parents replaced the glass in the storm door with metal screens.
 
 

Comments

[roga.livejournal.com]

Yay memoryfest! I think I'll have to go back and reread my posts from last year, just to make sure I'm not repeating anything, because I can be senile that way and tell the same story over and over again.

Falling through the door sounds eeps, terrifying (and the kind of situation where you cry because you're scared, not because it hurts). I never really got injured when I was a kid, nothing more serious than skimmed knees. Your story reminds me of a book I loved to read when I was eight: Gadi Taub's Things I Keep To Myself, which was a collection of short stories told from the POV of a maybe ten year old boy. It was one of the only books in Hebrew I read when I was in the US, and the fact that it talked about everyday things, things that happened in school, and even a little romance (the narrator was in love with a girl in class but was afraid to tell her) - kind of like the Wonder Years - made me feel very adult when I read it. My favorite story was about the time his younger sister, Tali, fell through a glass window, got a deep cut on her forehead, and they had to take her to a hospital. That's all I remember from the entire book, really - sitting on my beige wall-to-wall carpet in California, and imagining gray and white playgrounds and hospitals in Tel Aviv, and a brother taking care of his little sister.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

That sounds lovely. A little touch of day-to-day life in a home you'd left. Did you wish for an older brother of your own?

This was the most traumatic injury I had as a kid -- that and chicken pox, which was during the same summer. My sister wasn't so lucky -- she broke her leg when she was two.

I think I'll have to go back and reread my posts from last year, just to make sure I'm not repeating anything

Ha. That's one of the main reasons I put together those index posts -- so I don't post the same memory twice.

[theninth.livejournal.com]

I'm a little envious that you actually remember your childhood... and I have no idea why I don't.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Interesting. At about what age do you start remembering things?

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting. I have incredibly clear snippets and memories from about the age of 10 onwards, and quite a lot from before that, but I know there was a whole heap of HUGE stuff that happened when I was about 6 that I've completely and utterly forgotten. Not a single thing. My family did a good job of shielding me from it, but it's the only time I know that the whole 'self-protection' forgetting has kicked in.

I can't imagine not being able to remember it - do you have photographs and things from that time?

[phinnia.livejournal.com]

I only remember pieces of mine. :P

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

Oddly, all my injuries seem to say something about me or the people I interact with. Like how I split my head open as a three-year-old because I was hyper indoors and ran into the corner of a filing cabinet. Or how I split my head open again in first grade by slamming into the side of a street post when running for the bus. I missed the bus, got a taxi to the hospital, got my father's scarf all bloody, and still got to school that day. I remember the mix of disappointment of still having to go in that day and embarrassment at showing up so conspicuously late to the classroom in the middle of the day. If I had to be there, I wanted not to stand out in any way.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Eek. I sympathize with not wanting to call attention to yourself. Did you get to school very late? Did your head hurt, or had they put you on some nice painkillers?

I slipped on some ice once in our front yard, walking home from school during a winter filled with ice- and snowstorms, and hitting my head, but not badly, just enough to bring tears to my eyes and a sense of hurt/anger the way minor head injuries do. I was supposed to go to Hebrew school that evening and tried to use the fall to get out of it (I hated it there, unlike regular school), but clearly I was fine and my mom made me go.

[jadesfire.livejournal.com]

Oh, ouch. It must have been terrifying for your mom, but at least you were alright.

I didn't go through a glass window. I bounced. We used to take all our family holidays in the same hotel in Mallorca, and it's where some of my happiest memories are from. Our room had 3 beds (me, mum and my godmother who used to come with us) against one wall, leaving a space at the other end for walking up and down, to get to the balcony door. Or, if you're me and you're six years old, sliding up and down the tiles on. Unfortunately, I misjudged my slide just a tad - I was a bit of a klutz even then - and couldn't stop before I reached the door. Fortunately, it didn't break, but I all-but knocked myself out, and remember lying on my mum's bed, staring at the ceiling as she put a cold flannel on my head.

My forehead is actually bumpier than it should be, thanks to an incident with a nail when I was a toddler. It seems I've always had a thing about banging my head on things - my mum once dropped the car boot down onto me, and I was always walking into things at school. And I won't begin to list the number of cupboard doors I've stood up into...

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Yikes. Can we interpret it as your having been brought up in such a wonderful, safe and secure environment that you didn't worry about things like bodily harm, knowing you'd be taken care of if something happened?

I bounced.

Heh. Like a Bumble. (At first I thought you meant you went through and bounced when you hit bottom! Eek.)

[roga.livejournal.com]

I thought you meant bounced like 'was dropped out of a balcony and bounced', so your story is actually kind of reassuring :-) (There was a story in the news this year, in Sukkot, about a toddler who fell out of a third-story balcony, and was saved by landing/bouncing off the leafy roof of a sukkah that was erected in the yard. Which is very horrifying, and, um. Yes.)

My dad has a scar on his forehead that sounds like yours. When he was a kid, he jumped on a wooden board, that was apparently resting on a block of some sort, making it a lever. The other end, which unfortunately had a nail stuck in it, rose up and struck him in the forehead. He told me the story when I was small and playing in the yard; I've been afraid of nails since.

[walking-miracle.livejournal.com]

This seems like fun

My 'memory' is not mine, it happened to my brother when he was about 8, but it's a story similar to yours, so why not share. He and my then 6 year old cousin were doing something like tossing a ball between them while I was upstairs sleeping, they were looking after me. Anyway, somehow my brother punched his hand through the glass in one of the doors at home, and he got really bad cuts right in that very bad area to cut yourself, he was very lucky that they were not worse though.

So there they were, two scared little kids, who ended up knowing exactly what to do. My cousin's mom is a doctor, so he somehow knew to go into the bathroom and get lots of gauze and stuff to put on the wounds, and then to call the hospital (not 911, because he had been told the direct number to the hospital or something like that, if he ever needed to talk to him mom), and when someone answered he clearly stated that his mom was a doctor, could they please go get her, because his cousin was bleeding really bad. Amazing composure from a 6 year old kid.

My mom has told us many times since that coming back to the house, and meeting an ambulance and police cars was one of the scariest things she's ever witnessed. This was all back when nobody had cellphones.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Hi there!

That is amazingly resourceful for such young kids -- and boys besides. ;)

I can only imagine the terror your mom felt when she saw all those flashing lights in front of the house, and how relieved she must have been when she found out what had happened and that your brother would be okay.

[purridot.livejournal.com]

You were so brave! Your poor mother; she must have been so worried.

I have a 1.5 inch deep scar on my cheek, which I hardly ever notice because it doesn't have any scar tissue (I only notice it when I'm putting on makeup). My mom tells my I was badly scratched by a cat as a child, and she freaked out and rushed me to the doctor, yet I have absolutely no memory of it!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

How young were you, do you know? Clearly it didn't traumatize you so badly that it turned you off cats when you grew up. :)

Your poor mother; she must have been so worried.

She frets, which I love and appreciate but still laugh at sometimes. One of my favorite fretting stories was when I had my wisdom teeth out when I was ~14. I was on codeine, which is supposed to make you sleepy, but she was so wrung out from anticipating the surgery and its aftermath (she'd had hers out one at a time a few years before, using somewhat older techniques, and had swollen up and been miserable) that she was the one who fell asleep while I lounged on the couch and read The Stand.

[mer-duff.livejournal.com]

That must have been terrifying - I'm glad you emerged only minorly scathed.

I once started a conversation with my friend K, "The first time I nearly blinded myself as a child..." That's as far as I got, because he would not let that statement go (I used the exchange in a House story - didn't finish it either).

I'm not sure which story I was going to tell K (and yes, there are enough near-blinding stories that I get them confused), but this was not one of them :)

When I was in Grade 3, they built a new "adventure playground" at my school - though all it really consisted of was a couple of teeter-totters, a jungle gym, and a swingset. The teeter-totter was the star attraction, though. It was carved from a log and was big enough and solid enough that you could get five kids on either end quite easily. Which meant, of course, that we crowded as many kids on it as we could, some sitting, some standing and balancing. I was standing one day, and I don't know if one end dropped abruptly or I just lost my balance, but I fell face-first onto a rock and gashed my mouth. My mother taught at the school, so I remember lying on the ground bleeding, while someone ran to get her. I can't remember if I needed stitches, though I do remember getting carried to the nurse's office and my mother in near-hysterics. And I remember that we weren't allowed to have more than two kids on either end of the teeter-totter for awhile after that...

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking that you must have a veritable volume of scar stories, and lo, your comment did appear.

Playgrounds. There's really no way to make them safe, is there? And should they be completely protective anyway? Maybe they are roundabout ways to teach kids that they're susceptible to injury and need to be careful at an early age.

I fell face-first onto a rock and gashed my mouth.

Ow! And mouth injuries bleed. Do you remember ice packs or anything?

That must have been terrifying - I'm glad you emerged only minorly scathed.

I am glad too. I think it was over so quickly that there wasn't time for terror, really. Just right through the thing, and then there must have been some pain or shock afterwards, but I don't really remember.

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

Thankfully I've never had a traumatic injury like that. I think the worst I had was being bitten by a dog when delivering newspapers. The pooch tried to take a nice chunk of thigh.

I do remember when my youngest brother had febrile convulsions. He was about 8 months old (I was about 7). That was scary--he turned blue and wouldn't stop jerking.

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

I think the worst I had was being bitten by a dog when delivering newspapers.

Yikes! I was menaced and nearly bitten by a bulldog when I was a kid, and it left me permanently afraid of dogs (even cute, friendly ones). How do you feel about dogs nowadays?

[phinnia.livejournal.com]

Your 'being-stitched-up' experience is eerily similar to mine: when I was five I split my chin open on a hardwood floor and remember getting three stitches, but not being scared or crying, just ... being there.

The following summer (I think? - time is very not-linear and mixed up in my memories of childhood: I blame that on the anesthesia from 36 hours worth of surgery, which is its own different memory again) I split my head open by falling on my grandmother's tape player from the arm of her horrifically ugly green recliner chair. Fortunately it was just bloody, and I think my older sister/birthaunt nearly fainted, but I don't remember crying there either, just walking out covered in blood like 'um, someone should do something about this? mmkay?'

I see reflections of this calm behavior of mine whenever The Boy loses a tooth or vomits (fortunately nothing worse has happened to him in the past six years). Just walks out in the living room and looks at me (metaphorically speaking that is) and just stands there calmly and waits for me to do something.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

A famed phinnia hereditary calm, eh? I love the image of the both of you (even though I don't know what you look like, heh) as youngsters just walking up to the nearest adult where lots of other kids would be screaming and crying on the floor.

Did you get the eyesore of a chair bloody, at least, so it could be thrown out?

three memories

[stephantom.livejournal.com]

Ouch.

I'm having a few memories come to mind in response to this. All often-recollected ones, though, not something new dug up, but. There was the time I was weeding with my sisters in the yard. I was four or five. I was standing behind my sister for some reason when the weed she was working at with a trowel snapped an the momentum forced her to swing the trowel up and over her shoulder, and right into my face, an inch beneath my right eye. I really can't remember the actual moment of impact or if I cried or what. My mom ran over and picked me up and carried me into the house. I remember looking over her shoulder at my other sister who had her hand over her mouth. And at that point I just felt stunned. I had my hand over my eye and cheek and they made me take it down because they thought it was my eye and were freaking out about that, but then when it wasn't my eye they all said thank god it wasn't my eye. I didn't have to get stitches or anything. Still have a little scar there though, but it's hardly noticeable -- it's kind of just a short little line where there aren't any freckles.


Then there was the time in kindergarten I wanted to hang up-side down on the jungle gym like this friend of mine could do and I ended up doing a face-plant into the gravel and they took me to the dentist. Again, no lasting damage and no stitches. Tiny little scar on my chin.


A funner memory is the time in third grade that I ran into a pole. The aid blew the whistle signaling us all to line up to go back inside. So we all started running. I wanted to go under the parallel bars on the way, and was heading that direction, when my friend Trevor was suddenly in front of me and going right where I intended to go, so I veered to the left, intending to instead go around the parallel bars. But it was a little late for that decision, so I ended up going straight into one of the beams holding them up. I hit it with my face, sort of bounced back, stumbled a little, stunned, and then decided to lie down on the ground. And then some kids started to stand around me and I looked at them and thought of what a cliched movie shot it was. An aid came and walked me into the nurse's office. I had a black eye for a couple weeks. It was ridiculous.

A year later some kid in chorus (a year older than me) was making fun of a friend of mine because he had a lisp, so I punched his shoulder and told him to shut up. And he just looked at me for a moment and then said, "Aren't you that kid that ran into a pole?"

lolol There wasn't really anything to say to that.

Re: three memories

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

LOL! At least you were a kid when it happened. I walked directly into the edge of a door when I was a (supposedly) fully alert and well-coordinated adult. I was busy talking with friends while we were walking down a cluttered corridor in a university building. I had my head turned toward them and I tend to be rather oblivious of external objects, so...WHAM! The shiner was truly awesome. (Thank god I worked at home by then!)

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

I guess the scariest fall I had when I was a kid (roughly 6 or 7 years old) was off the deck of the cabin in the Poconos belonging to my father's best friend. My brother and I were fishing for chipmunks off the porch: You tie a peanut to a string and see if you can pull the chipmunk all the way up to the porch when he or she tries to nab it. (Yes, it probably was cruel, but we always fed the chipmunks after "catching" them.) I guess I leaned over too far to check out where the chipmunks were, and I toppled right off the deck.

The porch was only about 7 feet above the ground, but the ground beneath was a rocky ledge on a steep hillside. Plus, there was a huge boulder right underneath my side of the porch. I remember thinking (absurdly) as I fell that I should aim for the nearby tree (like a flying squirrel) so I didn't hit the rock, but I hit it anyway—with my head.

Unbelievably, I wasn't injured—just dazed. There was no blood, as far as I can remember. My Mom came out and carried me back inside. She was pretty upset, but I wasn't, although I was crying. The cabin was in the middle of nowhere and it didn't have a phone (this was before cell phones), so I don't know if taking me to a hospital was ever an option. Anyway, I didn't have any medical personnel look at me and I seem to have turned out OK, so I must have a very hard head!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

The caption's inappropriate, but I made a face like Wilson's when you described hitting the rock with your head, so there the icon is. Yikes! That's a very cool, surreal thought you had on the way down, though, and I think I know what you mean about crying even though you're not consciously upset or in pain -- just from the shock of it.

My brother and I were fishing for chipmunks

OMG, I want to play.

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

I'm constantly accidentally injuring myself. It nothing new; it's been a basic part of my 'character' for as long as I can remember. Despite this, I only have three permanent scars/marks. There's a scar on my finger from when I worked a jewelry counter with a difficult display case which removed a pretty serious chunk of skin when I was struggling with it one day. There's a discoloration on the same finger from a grease burn I got a couple of years ago. I've a solitary pock mark on the side of my nose from where my nephew hit me and knocked a scab off when I had the chicken pox as a child. That's all. I've never been in need of stitches.

I've been on crutches twice, though. The first time was because a boy pushed me on the playground and my tibia cracked when I fell. (Stupid boy.) The second was because I was bucked into a ditch while horseback riding and hurt my hip. That was a pretty freaky experience. I remember that Daddy's cousin and I had to wait for her husband to get home from work before we could go riding, because someone needed to watch the baby. Since she was born in 1994 and started riding when she was three, it was somewhere in that time frame when this happened. Anyway, once there was someone to watch the baby, we went and saddled up and headed out.

The horse I was riding was a former racer called Foxy. She was extremely sensitive to the bit and if you pulled back even just slightly too hard for her taste, she'd start to back up. I was a decent rider, though, so I'd never had any issues with her. Every once in a while she'd act up a little but I'd just stay calm, get her to stop, talk to her for a minute or two and then we'd move on. This particular day, though, a goddamn stupid squirrel ran across the path in front of her very suddenly and it spooked her. I tried to calm her down and get her to hold still but I'd been startled, too, so I wasn't as calm as usual and I pulled back too hard. She started to back up and it just so happened that there was an electric wire fence that ran along the path that we were on. It also just so happened that it was on at the moment. Foxy backed right into it.

An electric jolt to the ass is, apparently, not all that pleasant. She BOLTED forward and I, stupidly, hadn't adjusted my stirrups properly, so I was sort of ... left behind. She's a little girl, about 14 hands high (that's about 4'8" [142 cm] at the shoulder) but the ditch I fell into was a foot and a half or two feet deep so it was a six-or-more-foot fall and I landed directly on my hip. Since it's not uncommon for me to get hurt, unless I'm joking about it ("It hurts and has a tempicher! Kiss it bettah!") I don't usually complain about physical pain. But, lemme tell ya, this time I waaaaaaaaaaaaaailed. OMFG, it hurt like a mofo. I couldn't get up on my own. Once Daddy's cousin got me standing, I couldn't walk. I couldn't sit, either, because it made my damn hip hurt more. I had to stand there on one leg, simpering and sniffling while Daddy's cousin ran back to the house to get her husband to come and carry me. Ugh. One of the most painful things I've ever felt in my life.

To put a positive spin on this memory, while Daddy's cousin was gone, Foxy came over to me very cautiously, like she was afraid I was mad at her. When I patted her neck, she stood next to me and let me lean on her to keep my balance. ♥ She was a good horse.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I couldn't walk. I couldn't sit, either

Eugh, how awful. The horse does sound very sweet, though.

[recrudescence.livejournal.com]

What a cool idea. It's interesting to see how one memory tips into so many others.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Thanks -- I think it's cool too. Hope to see you around!

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

Oh, that sounds... dramatic. You must have hit it hard, because aren't glass doors usually pretty thick? Not that I actually know what a 'storm door' is (?)

During primary school I played a lot with the various girls across the street. One of them had this thing which would probably be considered horribly unsafe now - kind of like a see-saw construction on a thin metal bar, but which could also rotate 360 degrees, supported by a tripod platform in the middle. It was set on the concrete slab area of her backyard, because the grass area was sloped, and we used to sit either end and go round and round. It was fabulous, like flying, and one day I got carried away and leaned way back in the seat, and must have whacked my head on something, because it felt like something hit me, hard, and then everything just went black. That cliche about a light switch? Completely accurate. I guessed later it was likely the water pipes that stuck out a bit from the wall.

When I came to I was lying on my back on the concrete - I wasn't really in pain at the time but when I opened my eyes there were flashes of light, and I clearly remember thinking that there should have been birds, and I was mildy disappointed there weren't (I grew up on Warner Bros. cartoons *g*). My friend was peering at me, and I remember her mum was there as well - I have no idea how long I was out, probably only for an instant, but it took me a while to pull myself together and get up, because I was really dizzy and felt a bit heavy-headed and sick for a while. I don't remember anything else - I know she called or said she was going to call my mum, and obviously I had a big bump on my head, but I'm pretty sure I took myself back home across the road, and that I never went to the doctor or anything. I don't remember playing on that thing again, but I totally would have :)

Edit: Wow, typos! Also, I remembered that I actually have had stitches...

[bironic.livejournal.com]

That ride does sound like fun, other than what happened to you. I don't think I've seen anything like it; we had see-saws and sort-of merry-go-rounds that were just spoke-like handlebars converging in the center of a spinning metal disk we'd all stand on, but not a combination of the two.

But, hoo, what a way to whack your head. Though I laughed at your disgruntlement at not seeing any cartoon birds. :)

aren't glass doors usually pretty thick? Not that I actually know what a 'storm door' is (?)

A storm door is a lighter door that goes outside of the actual, heavy door. Ours was aluminum with two glass panes, kind of like ... this (http://www.stormdoors.com/productline/series.cfm?seriesID=5060). The glass is pretty thin -- thin enough for an eight-year-old girl to punch through at just under a run, anyway.

[nicocoer.livejournal.com]

When I was in 2nd grade, we lived in a Duplex in Bar Harbor, Maine, next to a little playground. It was a little three bedroom place- it had a tiny living room, with a bar between it and the kitchen, and the bedrooms were little nooks off of there, with the bathroom between my tiny room and the kitchen. I can still see every part of the apartment in my mind's eye.

I can't remember where I was when I heard it. I was either crouching down on the Kitchen side of the bar amongst the stools, having come out from bed for a glass of water, with my mother on the living room side, or I was in my room and listening through the vent that let the heat circulate between my room and the cubby-like room that came off of the living room.

IN any case, I stood there (and more and more I think it was the former) and eavesdropped on my mother's phone conversation. She was talking to a friend of her's, though I don't know who. In looking back, I have the impression of the person on the other side of the line being a brunette, but that might be my imagination. in any case, She was talking about my Biological father, and why she had packed us kids up and taken us to Maine in the first place.

And, more specifically, about my father, Drunk and angry, pushing her into some shrubbery out side of a bar after she came to get him when he or someone else had called to have her pick him up. I remember being scared, and knowing that every word coming out of my mother's mouth was true.

I think After she hung up, I crept back to bed and stared out the window while country music played on the radio. Maybe I was staring at the rhubarb patch in the empty lot out back. Maybe it was the moss covered fire escape that went out my door. Or perhaps it was nothing at all as my mind constructed exactly what I'll always imagine from her descriptions.

There was Snow on the ground.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Your memories are sometimes so sad, I hardly know what to say. This must have been a terrible night for you. What a lamentable landmark in the process of growing up.

[renice.livejournal.com]

I did the exact opposite of what happened to you at my grandma's house. I thought the sliding screen door to my grandparent's screened in porch was open when it wasn't and walked straight though it, taking most of the door with me and scraping my hands and knees on the hot summer pavement of their back porch. Ever since then, there's been a piece of tape on either side of the screen door so you'd know whether or not it was open or shut.

There was also the time my brother locked me out of the house and I got a bloody nose (the first one I ever remember having) so I just sat outside and wiped my nose on my arms and I think I even wiped it on my leg and I sat out there and cried and wiped my nose on my now bloody arms until my mom found me. But I did get a bubble bath out of it.

I was also almost hit by a car on the way home from school when I tried to cross the street by myself for the first time. The only thing I remember was that the car was bright red and it stopped mere inches from me while I stood right in its way like a deer in headlights.

But I can't really think of any grievous bodily injury that happened to me.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ever since then, there's been a piece of tape on either side of the screen door so you'd know whether or not it was open or shut.

Heh. Warning people as if they were birds about to smack into the door and slide to the ground.

The only thing I remember was that the car was bright red and it stopped mere inches from me while I stood right in its way like a deer in headlights.

Oh my goodness! It sounds like the sort of lesson parents might like to teach their children in some kind of simulator -- "This is why you have to look both ways!" -- but terrifying to actually have happen.