BROKEN BONES AND INJURIES
Leah: I wasn’t such a rough kid, so I didn’t have to sustain many injuries. I have broken two bones in my life. Well, technically, I’ve broken the same bone twice.
When I was five years old, my dad and I were playing in the living room. He would hoist me up using his thumbs and bring me down again. After doing this several times, he must have lost his grip, or I lost mine, and I slipped right out of his hands and landed on my wrist. I don’t really have any recollection of this event. Apparently I cried for hours. I believe they eventually took me to the hospital and were a bit surprised to learn that I had broken my wrist. When they first put a cast on my arm, I requested a black one. For what reason, I have no idea. My dad convinced me that I should get a pink one instead.
Later, when I was in the 6th grade, I had a similar injury. I was walking home from school and I was wearing sandals as it was almost summer break from school. I was actually walking to a friend’s house. I saw her up ahead and started running to catch up to her. My sandals caught the pavement and I went flying forward. I used my hands to break my fall. I scrapped up my elbows and knees pretty badly, so everyone was focused on those, but I could feel my wrist throbbing. My parents decided not to take a risk and took me to the hospital after they returned home from work. Sure enough, another broken wrist. I remember this accident pretty well. I had one pink cast and one orange cast. After one of my cast changes, my dad took me for deli sandwiches and I got to miss school the rest of the day. It was awesome!
There is one other story of an “injury” in my early, early days that my parents often tell me. When I was only a few months old, my mom placed me down on their waterbed. Yes, they were hippies if you’re wondering. Well, my dad came into the room and flopped down on the waterbed. If you know anything about waterbeds, they move A LOT. After all, it’s water. So, there I went, flying through the air at only a few months old. Poor baby. Luckily I didn’t have any long-term effects. :)
Piet: I never broke any bones, but as a village boy, we had no toys to play with. However, we were surely creative and innovative; sometimes a bit too innovative and dangerous! We made our one cars with wire and coke tins. If we didn’t have wire we would use bricks as an imaginary car :) Those were “the good old days”. Sometimes we would go bird hunting with our slingshots (“ketty”) but being boys we got bored hunting even though bird hunting provided our lunch for the day. So, we started making teams and played something similar to paintball except with stones! Now that I am thinking about it as a parent, it seems stupid what we did. Anyway, I was shot at and I remember I almost lost my eye, in fact. At that moment I thought I lost my eye because I was bleeding so much, I screamed, “My eye has burst! Help, help!” I also told my friends not to take me to my grandmother, because I knew she wasn’t going to spare the rod. :)
But my friends felt very frightened of the fact I was claiming to have lost my eye. So, they picked me up and rushed me to my granny. When we got there they pinned me down and told my granny:
Friend: Kgomotso has lost his eyes
Granny: what happened?!
Friends: We were playing and someone shot him with slingshot.
Granny: So you guys played that slingshot game again?
When I heard this question I knew that a hiding (spanking) was coming. So granny cleaned off the blood and saw that the stone didn’t touch my eye. She immediately flipped me over and gave me a terrible hiding! You would think after the stone nearly hitting me in the eye and a good hiding I will never play the slingshot game again, right? But I carried on playing it. It was my favourite game because it was the only time I could pay revenge on the bigger guys since I was the smallest and skinniest.
Leah: I wasn’t such a rough kid, so I didn’t have to sustain many injuries. I have broken two bones in my life. Well, technically, I’ve broken the same bone twice.
When I was five years old, my dad and I were playing in the living room. He would hoist me up using his thumbs and bring me down again. After doing this several times, he must have lost his grip, or I lost mine, and I slipped right out of his hands and landed on my wrist. I don’t really have any recollection of this event. Apparently I cried for hours. I believe they eventually took me to the hospital and were a bit surprised to learn that I had broken my wrist. When they first put a cast on my arm, I requested a black one. For what reason, I have no idea. My dad convinced me that I should get a pink one instead.
Later, when I was in the 6th grade, I had a similar injury. I was walking home from school and I was wearing sandals as it was almost summer break from school. I was actually walking to a friend’s house. I saw her up ahead and started running to catch up to her. My sandals caught the pavement and I went flying forward. I used my hands to break my fall. I scrapped up my elbows and knees pretty badly, so everyone was focused on those, but I could feel my wrist throbbing. My parents decided not to take a risk and took me to the hospital after they returned home from work. Sure enough, another broken wrist. I remember this accident pretty well. I had one pink cast and one orange cast. After one of my cast changes, my dad took me for deli sandwiches and I got to miss school the rest of the day. It was awesome!
There is one other story of an “injury” in my early, early days that my parents often tell me. When I was only a few months old, my mom placed me down on their waterbed. Yes, they were hippies if you’re wondering. Well, my dad came into the room and flopped down on the waterbed. If you know anything about waterbeds, they move A LOT. After all, it’s water. So, there I went, flying through the air at only a few months old. Poor baby. Luckily I didn’t have any long-term effects. :)
Piet: I never broke any bones, but as a village boy, we had no toys to play with. However, we were surely creative and innovative; sometimes a bit too innovative and dangerous! We made our one cars with wire and coke tins. If we didn’t have wire we would use bricks as an imaginary car :) Those were “the good old days”. Sometimes we would go bird hunting with our slingshots (“ketty”) but being boys we got bored hunting even though bird hunting provided our lunch for the day. So, we started making teams and played something similar to paintball except with stones! Now that I am thinking about it as a parent, it seems stupid what we did. Anyway, I was shot at and I remember I almost lost my eye, in fact. At that moment I thought I lost my eye because I was bleeding so much, I screamed, “My eye has burst! Help, help!” I also told my friends not to take me to my grandmother, because I knew she wasn’t going to spare the rod. :)
But my friends felt very frightened of the fact I was claiming to have lost my eye. So, they picked me up and rushed me to my granny. When we got there they pinned me down and told my granny:
Friend: Kgomotso has lost his eyes
Granny: what happened?!
Friends: We were playing and someone shot him with slingshot.
Granny: So you guys played that slingshot game again?
When I heard this question I knew that a hiding (spanking) was coming. So granny cleaned off the blood and saw that the stone didn’t touch my eye. She immediately flipped me over and gave me a terrible hiding! You would think after the stone nearly hitting me in the eye and a good hiding I will never play the slingshot game again, right? But I carried on playing it. It was my favourite game because it was the only time I could pay revenge on the bigger guys since I was the smallest and skinniest.