Stitches
I was rounding first base after having hit the ball into what was considered left field of our made up baseball diamond. The "ballpark" was in the middle of the asphalt playground of my grammar school. If you got the ball into left field it might roll for ever considering the flat grass less surface that we played on. So I was thinking at least a double and if it kept rolling past the fat kid in the outfield I might have a shot at an inside the park home run. I was fast then,... real fast.
As i rounded second on my way to a home run I saw my best friend who had been playing near second base holding the ball. How was that possible? To late...we collided because I could run better than I could stop. The next thing that I remember is everyone standing over me including my friend who I had just run into and they all had the same look on their faces. It was a look horror the kind that 10 year old boys have when they see a friend in trouble but are saying ( some out loud)..."WOW...that looks bad!". Ten year old boys are not subtle ....cruel, honest...but not subtle.
I was about to get up and protest some kind of interference that prevented me from getting to next base when I noticed this warm red liquid running down my arm. My head hurt...there was red everywhere...I sat down and before I new it I was being ushered to a local doctors office who lived in the neighborhood. Suddenly my mom was was there as I lay on a table blinded by overhead lights. The room was cold and white. With the doctors face inches from stinking of some kind of baloney sandwich that he probably had for lunch.." Look , he shouted..you can see the bone" as he parted the skin above my eye. I could see the look in my mothers eyes and it was a look that suggested she didn't share the doctors morbid fascination with my wound. "Stitches, probably four", he bellowed. "But he has never had stitches!", my mother mourned, knowing that my was angelic face would never be the same again.
"Cool", I thought. A scar...yeah!! Nothing like a scar on your face to show how tough you are.
Well some fifty plus years later and probably another 60 or 70 stitches on that same face I am not any tougher just scarred. I often said that if I was a prize fighter I would have lost every fight in the first round with the first punch. The punch would have knocked me down and the blood that would come spurting out of the cut on my face would be enough for my corner to through in the towel every time.
I have these stitches most from playing sports, specifically basketball with friends. At least once a season ,sometimes several times, I would catch an elbow and the blood would flow. The emergency room new my name and kiddingly said that they were naming one of the rooms after me.
At work they would just shake there head and wonder when I would give up this foolish game.
Well I finally did but, not because of the carnage inflicted on my face but instead because we all just got old. Instead of running on a basketball court we watched it on TV over a beer no more huffing and puffing of arthritic bones up and down some smelly gym.
I still get stitches mostly now from nails, hedge clippers, chainsaws, falling out of trees or off stonewalls...basic combat yard work. But most of them now aren't on my face...I said most not all...after all I do have a tradition to maintain.
As i rounded second on my way to a home run I saw my best friend who had been playing near second base holding the ball. How was that possible? To late...we collided because I could run better than I could stop. The next thing that I remember is everyone standing over me including my friend who I had just run into and they all had the same look on their faces. It was a look horror the kind that 10 year old boys have when they see a friend in trouble but are saying ( some out loud)..."WOW...that looks bad!". Ten year old boys are not subtle ....cruel, honest...but not subtle.
I was about to get up and protest some kind of interference that prevented me from getting to next base when I noticed this warm red liquid running down my arm. My head hurt...there was red everywhere...I sat down and before I new it I was being ushered to a local doctors office who lived in the neighborhood. Suddenly my mom was was there as I lay on a table blinded by overhead lights. The room was cold and white. With the doctors face inches from stinking of some kind of baloney sandwich that he probably had for lunch.." Look , he shouted..you can see the bone" as he parted the skin above my eye. I could see the look in my mothers eyes and it was a look that suggested she didn't share the doctors morbid fascination with my wound. "Stitches, probably four", he bellowed. "But he has never had stitches!", my mother mourned, knowing that my was angelic face would never be the same again.
"Cool", I thought. A scar...yeah!! Nothing like a scar on your face to show how tough you are.
Well some fifty plus years later and probably another 60 or 70 stitches on that same face I am not any tougher just scarred. I often said that if I was a prize fighter I would have lost every fight in the first round with the first punch. The punch would have knocked me down and the blood that would come spurting out of the cut on my face would be enough for my corner to through in the towel every time.
I have these stitches most from playing sports, specifically basketball with friends. At least once a season ,sometimes several times, I would catch an elbow and the blood would flow. The emergency room new my name and kiddingly said that they were naming one of the rooms after me.
At work they would just shake there head and wonder when I would give up this foolish game.
Well I finally did but, not because of the carnage inflicted on my face but instead because we all just got old. Instead of running on a basketball court we watched it on TV over a beer no more huffing and puffing of arthritic bones up and down some smelly gym.
I still get stitches mostly now from nails, hedge clippers, chainsaws, falling out of trees or off stonewalls...basic combat yard work. But most of them now aren't on my face...I said most not all...after all I do have a tradition to maintain.