That Time I Broke My Foot...

As I mentioned before, when I was a kid we lived on a ten acre piece of property in Granbury. Maybe I didn't mention the Granbury part, but there it is. We called this place The Farm. It was a diverse piece of property to be sure. My dad cleared out a nice portion of field where my brothers and I could play with out getting lost in the woods and long grass of the rest of the property. We mostly avoided that portion. Except this one time.

The boys and I were playing soccer in the field one day. It was a intense game and when I saw my chance to kick that ball right over my brothers' heads I took it! I kicked that ball so hard it didn't move. Because it was a stump. The ball had been next to the only tree stump in the field and I kicked it as hard as I could.

My foot hurt for a few days, but my parents insisted that if it were broken, I wouldn't be able to walk. This would later be proven to be incorrect. Also, my mom went on for days about my inability to differentiate between a ball and a stump. It was a tense game, Mom!

I finally whinged enough that my mom relented and asked the one doctor at our church to look it over on Sunday almost a week later. He poked my foot and asked if it hurt several times and I wanted to smack him, but I was only eight so I meekly replied yes. Then he wrenched my foot back and forth a few times. I must have turned green because he told my parents to bring me in for an x-ray the next day.

I limped through school and then had to wait until my dad got home from work to take me in to town. Granbury is hardly a thriving metropolis now, so it was po-dunk back then. The doc's office was off the highway in a business park that had maybe two more office buildings (and I use the term loosely) and then nothing.

I don't know if we didn't have an appointment and they were just going to squeeze us in or they just felt that a doctor's office was a fine place to grow up, but we sat in that waiting room for FOR-EV-ER. Like it was light when we went in and dark after we left. Anyway, after what seemed like an hour  of waiting (remember, I was eight) my dad started pacing the room like a caged animal, one end to the other, one end to the other until he abruptly stopped mid-pace and yelled, "that foot better be broken!" and then he left. HE LEFT! That man got in his truck and drove away.

I was so freaked out, I was tempted to kick the wall just to make sure the job was done. My foot was x-rayed, found to be broken in three places, wrapped in a cast and had just finished drying when he finally came back. He never said a word about where he'd been, didn't apologize for leaving me and didn't say one word about my cast.

Flash forward twenty years.

My dad and I were at one of the few points of my life where we were communicating and I brought that night up. My dad has an amazing laugh. I have always loved it. His laugh is one of the only positive memories I have. Anyway, I asked him where he'd gone that night. He laughed as he told me he'd recently gotten a speeding ticket and to avoid paying the fine he had to attend a defensive driving class that apparently my visit to the doctor was encroaching upon. He left the me with the doc so he could take that class and keep the ticket off his record and the fine in his pocket. He thought it was funny as hell.

I, however, am still not amused.