Prated and Printed

Long before I had kids, I decided that honesty was the best way to approach life.  Like most kids I went through a lying phase but, instead of slowly gaining the maturity that eventually ends it, I was yanked into the world of truth in a matter of minutes.

My tiny, rural, catholic grade school relied heavily on imagination and creativity for most things, but particularly for recess.  The 1st, 2nd,  and 3rd graders were allowed on the sad little playground but the rest of us had to make our own entertainment.  Playing softball with the same handful of kids every day was so monotonous and predictable that you could almost call the game play-by-play and run-by-run without even picking up a glove.  Mike and David were always good for homeruns since there had never been a time when they hadn’t hit it over the fence into the cow pasture.  The Lisas were always strikeouts and the rest of us somehow managed to hit at least single but usually ended up being tagged out while running the bases.

Red Rover was good for a few weeks but, once again, the intimate knowledge we had of each other’s physical prowess ruined all the fun.  Everyone knew exactly whose hand clasps would hold and whose would immediately give way.  So we expanded our world to include more daring and unpredictable activities.  We started with stuntman jumps off the second story fire escape, but that only lasted about a month before the nuns finally noticed what we were doing and called a halt to it.  Full contact tag was a hit for a few weeks until one of the Lisas ran full tilt around the corner and headfirst into the amazingly large and hard head of Danny Robbins.  Then we invented High Jump.  High Jump turned out to be the last of the great recess games.  After the fateful day we were all and forever stuck with softball.

I honestly don’t remember who invented High Jump, but it was me who ended it.  High Jump had a simple premise.  Jump – as high as you could.  The inherent flaw in High Jump was our choice of location.  We would run as fast as we could and then spring onto a ledge, push off with one leg, and see who could tap the highest.  Kind of like doing a layup in basketball.  The location issue came into play when I lost my rhythm and slammed knee-first into the ¼ inch thick plate glass basement window.  Yes, we had been running straight at a 6 foot tall window.

As soon as the glass shattered, but before the scream left my body, my partners in crime ran like cockroaches and left me there with what looked like two freshly cut pieces of steak flapping where my knee should be.  Unfortunately my screams for help were not heard because the 7^th & 8^th graders had the radio blaring with the baseball playoff game and were cheering on the St. Louis Cardinals.  What is it with those nuns and ballgames?

All I could think about during my solitary trek halfway around the school and up the stairs to the nurse’s office (while I cupped my butchered knee) was that badly cutting my knee was the least of my worries.  What now loomed over me was the broken window and what cover stories my friends were telling.  Because I knew that a plausible (and rule-abiding) explanation for my ‘accident’ was just not a possibility given that they were six terrified 5th graders out to save their own skins.  I don’t remember what excuses we made and what stories we told but what I do remember is that powerful ‘Sign from God’ that was given to me to quit lying and kept me out of school and in a cast for three months.