By Marla Boone
Contributing columnist
Disclaimer: I am in no way trying to evoke this or prod it into being. If tomorrow, your child falls down and breaks his leg, I am, preemptively, denying all culpability. Don’t even think about suing me. I’m innocent. I have written a disclaimer. Plus, my insurance isn’t all that good.
Having made the remark about offspring fracturing various limbs, I now ask, when was the last time you saw a kid in a cast? When I was a kid…stop right there. Let me revel in that beginning, the sop of all parents, used to remind children how our generation walked uphill (both ways!) four miles to school through three feet of snow (even in May!) to a one-room school house presided over by the teacher equivalent of Nurse Ratchet. At my public school, we did not have Nurse Ratchet teachers. We had Catholic nuns. Try explaining that to the state board of education. Since I am not a parent, my opportunities to employ that line about childhood hardships are slim, indeed. The closest I come is to be the part-time caregiver to the world’s most neurotic dog. Let me tell you, this dog could not care less about how things were when I was young. He cares about three things: (1) Food (2) If his human dad is within touching distance (3) If his human dad is within touching distance with food. As far as he is concerned, things would be altogether better if I had disappeared as an infant, kidnapped by a religious cult with very low standards and not heard from again. But I digress.
When I was a kid (sigh), about every other week a classmate of mine would show up with some horrific injury requiring a run of heavy black stitches, the aforementioned cast, or an amputation of a minor body part. Occasionally, the damage would be something not too out of the ordinary. Falling out of a tree, sliding badly into third, falling off a bike…that sort of thing. Are kids even allowed to climb trees anymore? Are they allowed to make a spectacular, game-winning slide? My guess is, not without a full helmet and pads and a waiting, welcoming net. I was terribly slow at learning to ride a two-wheeler. The gravel from Kelch Road has taken up permanent residence in my knees and chin. I’m not sure the bike helmet had even been invented back then. The lack of that, along with no sunblock, left us exposed to all sorts of peril.
Sometimes, though, the injury would fall into the mind-numbing category. I lived in a farming community. Every year, it seemed, someone would fall into a silo auger. If you don’t know what a silo auger is, use your imagination. It’s worse than that. All the helmets and pads in the universe aren’t going to be much help if a kid falls into a silo auger. The extent of my injures were falling off a horse (full leg cast), being run over by a steer in a neighbor’s barn (yes this really happens out in the boondocks) and catching myself on fire while sitting on a fire truck which was, itself, parked inside a fire station (loss of a wide swath of hair and pride).
I know kids today are being seen in urgent care for thumbs strained from the onus of endless computer games. I also know there are young ‘uns out there hiking the Appalachian Trail. By themselves. Self-sustained. While finishing their doctoral theses. I admire these latter kinds of people. It’s dangerous out there. There are poison shrubs, crazy hillbillies and bears. But, thankfully, no rampaging steers.
Marla Boone resides in Covington and writes for Miami Valley Today.
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