My Broken Ankle

By the time I was ten years old I had begun to like my brother better. At least he was someone to play with at times. I would rather read or play the piano, but at times I would go outside with him.
We had one old bike to share at that time. It was a big boys bike and difficult to ride, but I did master it. Keith thought it would be fun to take turns racing with it. He said he could get some twine out of the shed to make a goal line to see who could break it as we went whizzing through. He got the twine and we stretched it across our driveway. We were a long ways away from the house. Since I was the oldest I told him that I got first try. He didn't like it, but he let me. I was a lot bigger than him. I went quite a ways back from the twine and built up quite a bit of speed. I hit the twine and was so tickled for a split second. The twine got tangled up in the spokes of the bike and stopped me on a dime. I got thrown into the air and when I hit the hard ground I twisted my ankle and broke it. Keith went tearing to the house and told my mother and she got my dad. They came to see how bad it was. My dad got all excited and kept telling me to walk on it. Oh that made my mother so mad she yelled at him. I had never heard her yell at my dad. She said, "can't you see that it is broken?"
Well the next thing was that I was taken into town to the hospital in Cherokee. At the hosital they put my leg in a cast with a rubber thing that was sticking out from the bottom. It was called a walking cast. I thought to myself, "That just isn't going to happen." I was to walk with crutches for a few days then walk on the broken ankle in the cast.
My mother was talking to my dad and said, "I think we should buy a television. She (meaning me) is not going to be able to go outside until that leg heals and she needs something to do." Dad said ok. That was in 1954. The television cost two hundred dollars. I couldn't believe it. They had already spent eighty dollars on the doctor and hospital bill. I heard about that plenty, let me tell you. We true to form, I became addicted to television. I watched Two Gun Play House and Howdy Doodie until my mother wanted to scream. The day came when she said that I should start walking on my cast. Of course, I said no, I would not do that. She put a kitchen stool in the middle of the kitchen and told me to walk to the stool and sit on it. Again I said no because it would hurt too bad. She tried and tried to no avail. Finally she said (she must have taken psychology courses too) "ok, but you will have to stay on that stool because I have things to do. You just decide what you are going to do." I can remember Keith coming in to the kitchen grinning at me like I was some big coward. Finally, I said "ok but it's going to be all your fault if it breaks again" Well it did not hurt a bit and I found I could walk all over the place by myself. I had found myself chuckling kind of a sick chuckle because I could not believe that she had been right. My mother told that story for years.