Through the looking glass

Being the youngest has benefits, trust me.  I was slightly coddled and spoiled and fussed over to a point. But it has its drawbacks. Like being blamed for every naughty thing that goes on and being teased by your older siblings.

In my case, my siblings were quite a bit older than me. The year that I was born, my oldest brother was 13, my oldest sister was 12, my youngest sister was 10. My youngest brother was the closest to my age at 6 years older than me.

Me, age 3, with my youngest brother

So as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, when I was old enough, and my youngest brother wasn’t too old, we would hang out and play together with the other neighborhood kids.

For the most part we got along. But my brother was a teaser. And I was just a tiny bit overly dramatic with a wee bit of temper. One incident when I was 5 would pretty much prove both.

When I went to kindergarten Mom went back to work part time. I think the first job she had was working at Carvelle’s restaurant in Wilson as a hostess. I remember going there sometimes to pick her up and hoping she would let me have a soda. Sometime she did. Most times she said I could have water, which of course was absolutely no fun.

On afternoons that she had to work, usually my oldest brother, who was 18 or my oldest sister, 17, would babysit me.

On this particular day my oldest brother was home. My youngest brother and I were outside playing. We went to go inside and he ran ahead of me and  he thought it would be funny to run in the house and hold the glass door closed so I couldn’t get in. Then he thought it was even funnier to lock the glass door. Then he thought it absolutely hysterical to point at me and say things like, “haha…you can’t get in. Sorry, see you tomorrow!”

I kicked the door. I rang the bell, I cried and knocked on the door. Then I started getting mad, so I knocked harder. Then I started pounding on the glass door and crying and telling him he’d better let me in.

All of a sudden, my pounding resulted in my right arm crashing through the glass pane of the front door. I don’t remember any pain. I just remember the look on my brother’s face, and the blood everywhere.
His face went white and he took off to find our oldest brother. I was in shock, and kept thinking that if I went inside I would get blood all over the floor and Mom would be really mad at me. So I had it in my head that I had to hide.

I crunched over the broken shards of glass and hopped off the front steps and started running. I thought I’d hide out in the woods in the backyard of our house. Maybe I thought my arm would just stop bleeding and I could just come inside later and no one would know. I was 5, remember. Then I remember feeling the blood hitting my legs as I ran and thought maybe this was worse than I thought, and maybe I should just go around to the back door and sit still in the grass–figuring the blood wouldn’t do any harm pooling in the grass.

By the time I got to the back door, my oldest brother was there. I panicked that he was mad at me and I started running around to the front of the house again. He caught up with me and tackled me around the waist. He picked me and ran me across the street to the Long’s house. Mrs. Long was a nurse. I don’t really remember anything else until I was in the emergency room. I’m guessing Mrs. Long assessed me and then she brought me to the hospital. I remember laying on a table in the emergency room and the nurse cleaning my arm and it was hurting now. They were sewing my arm up with what looked like a sewing needle and brown thread. I remember crying and the nurse gave me a rootbeer lolipop to eat while they finished up. The scar was about 5 inches long and deep.

Two years after “the Incident.” Still buddies

They fit me for a soft cast for some reason. My mother thinks it was because of my age and they didn’t want me picking at the scar or getting it dirty. What I remember about that cast is that I wasn’t allowed to go on the swings or play on the playground during recess. Maybe because they didn’t want me to bust any stitches.
I had to pick a quiet toy and I would sit under a tree for recess. I’m sure I picked a different toy every day, but I remember mostly picking one of those Fisher Price yellow buses with the eyes on the front and you pull it along and the eyes move back and forth. .There were people with round bodies and a hole in the bottom that would stick inside of the bus. There was even a dog. I loved that bus.

My Dad fixed the glass window and he put a metal guard across the front of it so that nothing like that happened again. Rick and I continued to hang out. Today, that scar is still pretty visible. My temper is much better.