Leaving Them in Stitches

Yep, Mom was always there to stop the bleeding, patch me up, or get me to the emergency room.

I guess it's all part of growing up. Kids will be kids. But I seemed a little more bent towards physical challenges than most kids the same age. Before there was the movie "Jackass," there was me.

I've fractured my skull, broke two ribs (then caught pneumonia), broke the same ankle twice, smashed my one knuckle to pieces, and broke just about every finger at least once.

That's just the serious stuff.

Much more frequent was cuts, often followed by stitches, and countless numbers of bruises.

I remember thinking how cool it would be to jump off our back deck, which is about 12-feet in the air. So I did.

Every year my Dad would have a big pile of dirt delivered to patch holes around the property. Well, that pile of dirt quickly became my Evil Knievel ramp each Spring. And off I went on my old Schwinn with the banana seat and the big handle bars, speeding towards the pile, flying through the air, then trying to mark my landing spot so I could go at it again and go higher, go farther.

I ran through cornfields, through woods. I wore through the knees of my jeans like I never learned to walk and just crawled around on all fours. I gathered all of the neighborhood kids together and organized football games, baseball games, at least once a summer I would organize the "Albert Olympics," with great events like the bike jump over Dad's dirt pile.

I'll never forget catching a diving pass for a touchdown in our neighbor's yard. The driveway was all loose stone, and it also happened to be the end zone. A stone embedded in my knee leaving a deep, wide cut.

Mom patched me together and got me off to the doctor's office. The doctor informed me that he was going to use a new technique - not stitches, but staples.

Staples? Well I didn't like the sound of that.

"Will it hurt?" I asked.

"No more than when you caught the touchdown pass," the doctor replied.

It hurt like crazy, three big, wide staples right on the top of my knee.

Driving home I asked my Mom "How do these staple things come out?"

"They'll fall out," Mom said.

"Fall out? When?" I asked.

"When they're ready to," she replied.

Now sometimes Moms might not tell the whole truth, but their motivation is only positive. My Mom knew I was through enough that day. There's nothing more fun than a doctor's office and a few staples in the knee. So she told me a lie to relax me and ease my mind.

Weeks later the doctor pried out the staples. It hurt worse than when he put them in.

Probably one of the most memorable of my many injuries was the time I got hit in the head with a golf club. I believe it was a 9-iron.

The reason this event was so memorable is because it's documented in a picture, one of my favorite pictures.

The day before Easter my cousin was visiting and we were knocking a few golf balls around the yard, taking turns picking out a target and shooting for it. True to form I walked straight into my cousin's swing, taking the 9-iron straight to the head. It was completely my fault.

It didn't hurt a whole lot. I put a hand to my head, then brought it down completely covered in blood. OK, now I was excited. I ran in to find Mom.

We were off to the emergency room. I was a bit of a regular. I took about a dozen or so stitches and left with my head wrapped in large white bandages.

Every Easter my Mom bought us all new suits and dress clothes and got us together for pictures. That Easter picture I'm all decked out in my new Easter suit - with a huge white bandage wrapped around my head. I love that picture. lol

And I'm not even going to go into the story of how my Mom snuck me into a hospital to have a broken finger set by an agreeable doctor.

It's probably good that my Mom was a nurse by profession. Although many days she probably felt like her work never ended.

Thanks Mom!