A gory story and other relics of safely distant childhood

In my childhood, I roamed through rough-and-tumble capers in a kind of free fall. Leaving us to our own devices, my parents intervened only if one of us came home bruised or bloodied, if the school called them because of our delinquency, if a report card disgraced. Their interventions rarely coincided with our interpretation of events.

We did not have play dates. After-school lessons were few. Parenting guides did not clearly assess whether or not children were at risk if left unsupervised, whether a child needed added support, whether a teacher’s punishment was fair-minded.

It seems so much more is known about at-risk circumstances, behaviours and practices nowadays. Parents, for example, are encouraged to implement and monitor boundaries that promote safe environments, understand more fully the range and complexity of childhood experiences, and collaborate proactively within educational systems.

In the “freedom” (mayhem) of my childhood, pivotal and sometimes harrowing events distinguished our unsupervised play. At four, running full steam ahead on the dock in front of the family cottage, I slammed my foot into a fairly substantial, rusted boat mooring. My three brothers were running after me. I don’t remember if we were playing a game or if they were out for blood.

I hit the mooring, blood gushed from a squished big toe. My brothers screamed (well, at least one of them did), and my mother came running.

There was nothing to be done but pile us all in the car and drive into town 45 minutes away. I was deposited at the local ER, while my mother found someone to look after the boys.

I don’t know if I was crying. I do remember that as we were driving in, I was fascinated by the blood advancing along the bandage my mother had improvised.

I was in the front seat; my brothers fussed in the back. It was a smallish sedan and, squeezed together, they were not about to let a wounded younger sister soften their rascality.

I don’t think the smashed toe was anybody’s fault. I am not sure if I stood by that insight. I probably blamed them. They probably blamed me. We were good at that.

In the ER, stupefied, I watched the needle enter my mushed toe. It had to be frozen so that the doctor could stitch things back together. It was a big needle, and still I did not cry. Rather, perched on a trim, white stretcher with a needle in my toe, I remained intrigued. My foot froze. Stitches didn’t hurt.

At home, my brothers were excited. They had never seen a frozen toe. One of them stuck a pin in it. I didn’t flinch. Miraculous. Another came up with a scheme. Why not take me through the neighbourhood circuit as a side show. They could wheel me about in a wagon and charge a penny to demonstrate the stick-pin phenomenon. Fortune awaited.

I do not think we got beyond one demonstration or two in the back alley before the scheme fell apart. But my brothers, though denied their money-making enterprise, continued to experiment with pins as the freezing abated.

They didn’t believe me when I protested. This might have gone on for some time. My mother did not come running. My brothers stopped only when I moved from protest to a bloodcurdling scream that involved the neighbour next door who sometimes intervened when deafened by our curiosity.

My toe healed. I don’t even think I had a scar to reveal at show and tell. As I grew up over the summers that followed, I always checked out that mooring. A sign of respect, perhaps, because it was my first big accident and one that required an ER visit.

The incident — retold throughout my childhood to amuse others — left us in stitches. We held this tantalizing freedom in our hands, a freedom well beyond our understanding of consequences. I think we knew, however, that we were at risk even as we sought the danger that defined our state of play.

Reminiscing about childhood mayhem still entertains as standup comedy on occasion with friends also in their third act. We compare notes, roll our eyes, and wonder at the good luck that preserved and protected us, though we also remember incidents where children less lucky suffered outcomes more dire.

My big-toe story reminds me of a different time. I recall it fondly, though I shake my head when I recognize it as only the tip of the rough and risky entertainment my brothers and I devised on our own: the time we encouraged our cousin to jump off the garage roof with an umbrella to see if he (and time) could fly; the cast on the broken arm that followed we thought might come in handy as a sledge hammer; the time…

arts@freepress.mb.ca