Broken

I recently saw some tweets regarding a young boy that broke his arm badly. Its always distressing when you see littlies in a bad way but he looked brave enough to withstand most things life will throw at him. Seeing him got me thinking about broken bones in my own family.
My eldest now 15 was about 4 and we were at Wagga visiting relatives swimming in a local competition and within the bounds of the pool was a disused skateboard half pipe. "Look how I can edge up the sides of this steep, slippery, steel plated, hard and unforgiving surface dad" was what he should have articulated to me. Instead I just watched as he of course lost his footing and came crashing back to earth onto his side. I was right there and saw the whole thing. "you OK?" I said. "Yep". Good, all done. At the time I had a nice luxurious company car that of course, meant I would be required to treat it as poorly as possible to get the full benefit of my salary package. Logic I hear you say. A bit more logic to come now. Between Wagga and Wollongong is a nice freeway, smooth, fast, 4 lanes wide, not busy and direct. Why on earth would I want to go on that when there are winding corrugated dirt rounds going to Canberra first? so that's what I did. Leading up to our departure for this extended journey, Lewis complained of a sore neck and shoulder so I would dutifully rub it for him as all good dads do and eventually had to give up with him wincing away from my loving grasp. The trip was fun, the rough dirt road jiggling the occupants of the car constantly hour upon hour, the sideways sliding that I was forced to do when presented with such dirt covered corners and eventually we emerged back into civilisation and home. The following day Lewis was still not happy about his shoulder so we as loving and responsible parents took him to the doctor now some 3 or 4 days after the half pipe stunt. An xray showed a clearly snapped collar bone. Note to self, don't believe your 4 year old when he says he's ok.  There was no lasting effects from the incident but he does break into a sweat when we go on a dirt road still to this day. Second note to self, don't take dirt roads when bitumen are available.

The little one of ours, Griffin, was not so subtle. Perched high on a spiderweb park, he looked as home as any other simian creature. He swung from rope to rope, climbing higher and higher...until... he climbed back down and things went awry on the last rung. Falling the 3 feet to the ground breaking his arm and requiring a lovely purple fibreglass cast. They are so much cooler these days than when I was a lad.
My own broken arm came about due to what can only be called concrete. Playing hand ball  at lunch during high school was the main attraction apart from girls. we would wear one glove on our strike hand because the speed at which we were hitting these tennis balls was causing damage to the flesh on our fingers. Darting left and right like a huge ping pong game, we'd often have to move far off our squares to get the opponents return. One such return saw the ball rocketing over a small brick wall, say 3 foot high, down into the lower area about 6 foot below the top of the wall on the other side. If you think someone else invented parkour well you 're wrong. As I lithely lept over the wall using a single hand on the top of the wall to propel myself to the lower level, my brand new grey Levi jeans (the rebel in us all didn't want to wear regulation grey trousers and the school only said they had to be grey so ha de ha ha mofo!!) sorry I digress. Well the new jeans were tight and well, bending my knees a little late lead to the toes of my black suede desert boots (yet another win for style in the stark school dress  requirements for black shoes) connect with the leading edge of the bricks and invert my body 180 degree just prior to my decent to the concrete below. I remember see these little white bits tumbling out in front of me as I open my eyes. It was my shattered upper front tooth. I also recall just not being able to get up. An ambulance was called and they took me off and all that sort of guff and it wasn't serious. I'd been smart enough to break my fall with my arm and face. In fact I was able to use the cast as a softball bat until it crushed to a pulp and I had to get a new cast. If you ever get a cast and they point out its not a softball bat, that's because of the precedent I set.
Broken people mend eventually. All they need is time.