I’ve been in and out of doctors’ offices several times over the past month, and the experience reminds me of one of the great fiascos of my childhood. I wish I could say that this incident happened when I was 4 years old and stupid, but I was actually 8 and had just entered a phase of clinical stupidity.
I was playing at my best friend’s house that day. She lived across the street, and we had known each other for three or four years. If it seems unusual that my best friend was a girl, all I can say is that she was willing to put up with stupid men. Anyway, there was a patio in front of her house that had a brick wall around it about waist-high. The patio floor was covered with pebbles, and it was one of our favorite places to play.
On this particular afternoon — I think it was the Ides of March — someone had left a 2-by-4 leaning against the wall of the patio. Since this was before the Internet, a 2-by-4 was real entertainment. So, we incorporated it into our games. We used it as a ramp to race Matchbox cars. We crawled under it like it was a bridge. We even pretended we were pirates walking the plank. It was all epic fun. Eventually we ran out of things to do. But just when we were about to move on to something else, I came up with a brilliant idea. I thought about this 2-by-4 leaning diagonally against the wall, and I said, “Hey, this will make a neat slide.”
Tonya didn’t think this was such a good plan, which further convinced me that I should do it. So, I climbed on top of the wall, sat on the end of the 2-by-4 with my feet straight in front, and let go. It wasn’t quite as smooth a ride as I had imagined. I seem to remember bumping my way down and landing in the pebbles. Then I stood up. It was at that point I realized why slides are made of metal.
When I got to the hospital, they put me in the emergency room, lying on my stomach, and the only thing standing between me and complete indignity was a long strip of examination table paper. The nurse announced that I had a 7-and-a-half-inch splinter. I would tell you where it was, but that would involve vocabulary that was once edited out of “Finding Nemo” in the Benson Auditorium. I can say it set a record in Rockdale County for the longest piece of wood ever extracted from that particular area.
My parents came with me to the hospital, having received the phone call every mother dreads. Now, you’d expect parents to be supportive in a time like this. My father laughed through the whole thing. Tonya would have come to the hospital, but she got a little dizzy from laughing. Even the nurses were snickering, which I’m sure must be a violation of some professional code somewhere.
It gets worse. In order to remove the splinter, the hospital had to call in a specialist from out of town. I never asked what kind of specialist he was. To this day, I don’t want to know what kind of specialist he was. It took him 45 minutes to get there, which means I had 45 minutes to listen to dad’s cheeky remarks. Eventually the doctor came, and I was comforted when he said he had performed this exact same procedure before. Until then I had visions of being written up in a medical textbook, or worse, being on the front cover of the Rockdale Citizen.
I’m happy to say that the operation was a success. They let us take home the splinter, which my father used to reinforce a leg on the dining room table. I sat a little lop-sided for the next three weeks, and sometimes to this day when I’m walking, I tilt a bit to the right. But I learned an important lesson: When a woman says, “That’s not a good idea,” I now at least consider listening.
