Story time

You may be wondering about the picture of me that appears on my front page (no, I'm not a seahorse --- I mean the other picture). It was taken on Christmas morning, 1976, less than 2 months after my 4th birthday.

I really don't know what the Groucho get-up was about. I don't recall seeing it in any pictures other than from that day. The toy I'm playing with was called Putt-Putt Speedway, and I absolutely LOVED it. You don't see it in the picture, but there was a little TV camera that went on the bridge. The camera had a little sticker with the number 12 on the side. In and around Wilmington, Delaware - which is where I lived at the time - Channel 12 is the local PBS channel. In the days before any of the seemingly dozens of Nickelodeon channels (not that we had cable, mind you), PBS was pretty much it for kids' shows in the morning. I was a "Sesame Street" kid through and through, so I was quite familiar with Channel 12. I recall thinking that this TV camera with a 12 on the side must be connected to the Channel 12 which I watched every morning. Perhaps my races were being broadcast!

But the real story here, of course, is the cast on my leg. Some weeks before, I had broken my tibia. I went with my mother to pick my brother and sister up from school. I was laying down in the front seat, and back then we never wore seat belts (the last time I was discussing the event with my mother, she insisted that I was wearing my belt, but I am certain she's mistaken - we never wore them back then - I never wore a belt till I took Driver's Ed and had to). I didn't always go with her to pick my siblings up, and since I was laying down and my sister couldn't see me, she figured I wasn't there and started to open the front door before she saw me. She closed the door... sort of, as it turned out... they both got in the back, and we were on our way.

We turned a corner leaving the parking lot, the door swung open and I started to slide out. I would have gone all the way out, except that right foot caught under the dashboard. When I was hanging out the door, my body twisted but my foot was held firmly in place. Something had to give, and that something was the tibia in my right leg. It split in a corkscrew pattern, something like when you pop open a tube of biscuits. I don't have a clear memory of this happening, but I do seem to remember seeing under the car as my head bounced on the street a couple of times (that explains a few things, don't it?).

Here's what I think is the best part of this story. I hope it happened. Picture someone walking their kid(s) home from school. You're walking along, just like any other day, "How was school?", "Blah, blah, math, spelling" whatever... and here comes this big green boat station wagon rolling by, door wide open, with a kid hanging out, arms flailing (I would imagine), head bouncing off the street. How freaking hilarious would that be?!? I mean, that person still has to be telling that story today. That guy's grandkids know about me by now.