The first biography of The Doors front man, Jim Morrison, was (rather appropriately) titled: No One Gets Out of Here Alive. I suspect that if one were to write stories about our childhoods, they might appear under the title: No One Gets Out of Here Unscathed.
Surviving childhood seems to me to be something of a miracle. I know we take a lot of precautions with our children today that parents never would have considered half a century ago. I am a firm believer that you can’t protect against every eventuality. Still, when I consider some of the experiences I had as a child, I wonder how I made it this far. And I know I’m not the only one.
Still, since I’m the one at the keyboard, you get to hear my episodes (although I’d love to hear your experiences).
My first brush with mortality came before I was able to speak. When I was but a wee boy, my mother used to lay me out on a blanket in the back yard. I swear that I remember looking up at the branches of the huge Chinese elm tree that grew there and having thoughts about not being able to talk, yet. But this isn’t about that.
Being a good mom, my mother didn’t leave me unattended. My sister—five years older than I—was tasked with watching me for short periods of time. Not wanting me to be bored, my doting sister would jump up and down and clap her hands to make me laugh—which apparently worked quite well. But as she continued, she lost her balance while jumping as high as she could, and landed on me.
Immediately I began crying—which brought my mother flying out of the house to see what was wrong. When asked what had happened, my poor sister told my mother that she had jumped on my stomach. Fearing the worst, my mother rushed me off to the doctor to have me checked out for a ruptured stomach. As it turned out, my sister had missed my stomach entirely and had landed on my leg, breaking it. Too young for a cast (and with the amazing healing powers of the very young), I recovered fully (despite my father’s assertion later in life that she probably landed on my head and not my leg).
It wouldn’t be my last trip to see old Dr. McDonald during my childhood. A couple of years later, my parents took me with them to visit a friend of theirs. While this woman was nice enough, I quickly became bored (a malady from which I still suffer) and launched off on my own to explore her very interesting house.
While the grownups talked about boring grownup things in the living room, I discovered a room where there where very interesting and colorful pieces of candy on a dresser. Knowing the delights of secretly discovered candy stashes (I used to crawl up on our kitchen countertops at home and dig into my mom’s secret stash of butterscotch candies), I helped myself to these enticing treats. After swallowing a couple of handfuls, I was rather disappointed in the taste. They weren’t sweet at all and almost stuck in my throat.
With a certain sense of disappointment, I wandered back into the living room, where I began to wobble a bit. I think my dad was initially a bit embarrassed by my apparent lack of coordination, until it became apparent that I wasn’t functioning at full capacity. It was then that our host realized where I had been—and that I had gotten into her stash of barbiturates.
My parents immediately called Dr. McDonald (who was already on another house call—remember those?) and he agreed to meet us at our house. Emergency Rooms, after all, were for real emergencies, not for toddlers who had swallowed colored pills.
We drove home, and (following Dr. McDonald’s advice) my parents did what they could to keep me awake. When nothing else worked, my dad took me down to the basement and put my on my tricycle (which I loved). I began slowly pedaling around the basement.
When Dr. McDonald finally made it down the stairs to our basement half an hour later, I was working on a new world land speed record for tricycles in the basement. When I nearly knocked him down on my third lap around the basement, he told my dad that he thought I’d probably be OK left promptly (probably to go home and have a scotch after surviving a near collision with a 200 MPH toddler). And, as Forrest Gump would say, “That’s all I have to say about that.”
However, I didn’t spend all of my youth under Dr. McDonald’s gentle and capable care. My dad was transferred to New York to work for AT&T. We actually lived in New Jersey–which my sister and I thought was kind of a different country (And in some ways, it was). They didn’t even know who the Cubs were there! And when we first moved in, a neighbor walked by and saw the Illinois plates on our car. “Illinois? She asked. Where’s that?” Her friend replied (and I’m not making this up), “Oh that’s way out west somewhere, near Chicago!”
Nonetheless, New Jersey is where I learned to ride a two-wheeler after AT&T transferred my dad to Manhattan. Both Mom and Dad took their turns running behind me as I learned to pilot my way along the sidewalks of Westfield. To this day, my heart goes out to the bushes along that sidewalk that gave their lives to my quest for two-wheel stability.
As is usually the case, I eventually learned to ride that bike without the assistance of training wheels. It really didn’t bother me (much) that the bike I rode was actually a girls’ bike that my sister had outgrown. As Roger Daltry would later proclaim, I was “Going Mobile.” That, however, had some significant consequences.
It was Labor Day–the last day of summer before beginning first grade. I was out on my bike for one final summer ride, I think. I say, “I think,” because I really can’t remember a thing about that day. Apparently, I was a few blocks from home when I was racing with another kid down a cul de sac and standing up so I could pump the pedals faster. At some point, the chain on my lovely girls’ bike froze, and the wheels on my bike stopped instantly. Momentum shot me over the handlebars and headfirst onto the street. Nobody had ever heard of bike helmets in those days. I’ve always been somewhat hardheaded, but my noggin was no match to the New Jersey asphalt.
I remember waking up in a room that I didn’t recognize (it was my sister’s room in our home in New Jersey) and wondering where in the world I was. I managed to get out of bed and wandered into the living room, where I stood next to my mother and yelled, “Mom? Where are you?” Apparently I had severe tunnel vision and couldn’t see her, but I’m sure I took several years off her life because she thought I was blind (she only lived to be 90). I ended up spending about a week at Overlook Hospital somewhere in New Jersey, with what turned out to be a pretty severe concussion. But it all turned out OK (Well, history hasn’t entered the final verdict on that, but . . .).
New Jersey, however, wasn’t finished with me, yet. The next fall (my second grade year) I actually started school on time. But because it was the fall, it was football season. So I joined a bunch of boys playing out on the playground at Lincoln Elementary School. New Jersey playgrounds were different than the one’s I’d known in the Midwest. They were pretty much rock and pebbles with some broken glass mixed in (I’m assuming to add color and interest).
In those days, I don’t think they had come up with the concept of “touch football” yet. We did it like the Giants did (Nobody had yet come up with the idea of a “Jets” team yet, either). It was tackle football and that’s all there was to it. Most of the guys I played with were older (4th and 5th grade guys). I was, however, pretty quick, so they let me run the ball. I took a hand-off and ran as if my life depended on it (which wasn’t too far from the truth).
A 5th grade guy tackled me with a vengeance and rode me like a surfboard along the rock and glass-strewn ground for about 30 yards (OK, not, really, but that’s what it felt like). When I stood up, I felt something warm and sticky running down the side of my face. During our slide along the ground, we’d encountered a sharp rock or a piece of glass. Now my left ear was hanging by a bit of skin and bleeding like a son-of-a-gun.
Not wanting to break off their game, the older guys told me to hold my arm up to my ear (to staunch the bleeding a bit) and to go home. I was wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt, and I did that (without whimpering, I might add) and headed for home. By the time I got home, my sleeve was completely soaked in blood and when my mom opened the door I thought she’d pass out. She was convinced that my arm had been torn off. I’m sure that took another few years off of her life (Did I mention that she only lived until the age of 90?).
Once again, I ended up at the doctor’s office (Emergency rooms in New Jersey were also for real emergencies). After a long wait (the doctor had to patch up some other people before he got to me—it was New Jersey, for crying out loud!) I got my stitches and went home with a big honking bandage on my ear.
I was only 6 years old, but things were off to a pretty interesting start. Things didn’t really let up all that much after that (I won’t even go into running a clothes line pole through my hand or getting hit by a car while on my bike). But I think it was pretty good preparation for having kids of my own. I remember my dad used to talk about kids who were “accident prone,” but he stopped using that phrase by the time I was seven.
Hey, I survived my childhood . . . and I suspect you did, too. And then some of had kids of our own and the cycle started all over again. I don’t think I have the nerve for grandchildren!
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