Childhood Misadventures

The band-aid on my right arm in that photo was there for a reason, and not because I had a cut.

For a time, my arm was almost paralyzed, and I wanted to mark it as having a problem. Today, that bandage is a reminder of a particular point in time in my life, when I happened to be at my obsessive comic book peak. As my mother put it, I was “preoccupied” with comic books. By then I was still buying DC comics, but I was mostly a full-blown Marvel maniac fanboy.

How did my arm become damaged and, significantly, without breaking a bone? Well, despite my mother’s accusation, I didn’t always just think about comic books. Well, okay, I was at that age when boys start thinking about girls, but I enjoyed other recreational activities, like riding my bike. Well, okay, I did that mostly to buy comic books. But what else? Calf Pasture Beach in Norwalk, CT had a large, “professional grade” swing set that was much taller than the one I enjoyed using in our backyard. I always tried to swing up as high as was possible.

I had just set a new personal height record, when physics took hold of me in my swimming trunks and I slipped off the seat. I can quite vividly bring to mind the sensation of flying forward through the air and landing sideways, on my right shoulder and arm. I have no recollection of anyone rushing over to check if I was okay.

After shaking off the initial impact there was no feeling any great pain. Incredibly, my arm didn’t feel broken, but I couldn’t feel my arm at all! It was numb and I couldn’t lift it.

When I rejoined my family on the beach, I knew that telling my parents something had happened wasn’t an option. After we were home, and I put on the band-aid, nobody asked why I was wearing it. Which confirmed that it was best to hide the problem and hope it improved. Fortunately, being left-handed, I was able to fake my way along.

A nerve must have been pinched in the fall. I don’t recall exactly how long it took for my arm to start working again. What mattered to me more than my arm flopping around, was not being able to ride my bike, thereby missing one of my comic book shopping trips!

That was but one of my near-misses in childhood. The first was not dying from meningitis around the time (or so I was told) when I was turning three. Being strapped down and subjected to a spinal tap is my earliest memory. Although my parents were told there was no hope, and I was given up for dead, as far as I can recall I didn’t die.

Then there was the time a neighbor boy pushed me into his family’s pool, with no adults present, and I very nearly drowned. He had knocked all of the air out of my lungs, so I sank to the bottom of the deep end. I had a moment when I thought I was about to die, only to force myself to crawl along the bottom of the pool to reach the shallow end. I never went in that pool again, but neither was I ever afraid of the water. (He ended up dying in a motorcycle accident.)

The family cat slashed the white of my right eye open when I made the mistake of petting him while he was eating breakfast. Luckily, no surgery was necessary, but I had thick gunk squirted into my eye a couple of times each day and got to play pirate for a while, by wearing an eyepatch. Decades later, an eye doctor spotted the resulting flat spot and he asked me, “What happened here?”

I loved to climb trees. One time when a branch gave way I crashed down through the branches below and badly gashed my right hand. I bandaged it myself and told no one what had happened. I had a scar there well into adulthood.

Riding my bike with some kids really fast down the hill of a brand-new street, another kid ran into me and I went flying over the handlebars. I must have hit my head, because I was knocked out for a while. When I came to, the other kid was gone.

Being such a resilient soul, I don’t think any of those incidents ever affected me … affected me … affected me.