April 11, 2021 ~ Sunday night (One shot in … the other vaccine shot coming! Woohoo!)
A million or so years ago – you know, somewhere between when the dinosaurs roamed the planet and now – I was in high school. A high school junior – soon to be senior, actually. The year was 1974.
And what prompts me to think of this time of my life at this time of my life? What has made me think of that particular summer and a particular incident while I am making lacy oatmeal cookies on a quiet Sunday night in April 2021?
I lifted a spoon.
No – it was not a 100 pound leaden, weighted spoon. It was not made of some super extraordinarily heavy metal/material … it was an ordinary teaspoon. A spoon from my silverware set … black resin handle and stainless steel (or so I surmise).
And what is it about this particular spoon that has me thinking about a summer 47 years ago?
My shoulder “went out”. No, not on a date or to take out the garbage … it dislocated.
Again.
It was the Summer of ’74 (quite unlike the Summer of ’42) … and I was a mere infant of 17. All tanned body, toned muscles and waist length hair. I, along with most every other 17 year old, had perky boobs and a nice ass. And, I weighed pretty much next to nothing. Let’s just say I was practically a fetus. And there I was … Captain of the Cheerleading squad … the coming year would be my fourth (being one of only a handful, in the nearly 75 year history of the school who made the team as a freshman) … all energy and pep and wool skirts (yes, even in the heat of a Chicago summer) … doing my best at practice to jump higher and cheer louder and execute a roundoff double back handspring better than Clark Kent himself – if he were a 17 year old female cheerleader doing gymnastics.
To make a long story short … I knew something was “wrong” while upside down in the air. I felt if I continued, I’d land on my neck. NOT a good thing. So, mid-flip, I bailed … and came down on my left, outstretched arm, with the sound in my ears of one sitting on a bag of potato chips. Only there were no chips. Just me. Three (or four) days later I emerged from the hospital with a 90 degree angled (heavier than hell) cast on my left arm – from fingertips to arm pit. I had shattered my wrist (potato chip bag) … dislocated my elbow and shoulder. Cracked three vertebrae and somehow managed to mess up both knees in the process as well. That was some fall!
In lieu of surgery on my wrist – the doctors set it three times. Breaking it again after each of the first two sets when it wasn’t “right”. Fun times. The third and final set was “good enough” cuz as they put it, “It’s not like you’re going to the Olympics.”
And while there, in that hospital for those three days waiting for the inflammation to subside (so swollen) and to see if the set was a good one (apparently not x2), I had an unusual “wardrobe”. Now back then, maybe they didn’t give out “gowns” but for some reason (and I’m putting all the blame and shame on my mother for this) … my mom brought me pajamas from home to wear. First off, why not bring me a tank top and some shorts? I wasn’t sick. I was just bed-bound waiting to see about this messed up arm. Secondly, she didn’t bring me pajamas as much as she brought me my “baby dolls“. Think every teenaged boy’s fantasy of sexy girls having a pillow fight – and what they might be wearing.
In my case, it was a baby pink shortie negligee type thing with a low cut, empire lace bodice (almost showing my nipples)/chiffon-poly flowing nightie that skimmed somewhere just below my shapely little 17-year-old ass! It had matching bikini panties. Did I mention it was virtually see through? Think Victoria Secret crossed with Junior Ho. Cute at home in my own bedroom … QUITE inappropriate for a hospital setting. What the hell was my mother thinking? I look back on those days … and now can’t remember but I must have had a good number of young interns checking on me! Dear god. Thanks Mom!
Anyway, lingerie trauma aside, good enough in 1974 didn’t turn out to be good enough even by 1979. I could forecast weather disturbances three days before any weatherman on TV. My wrist throbbed and hurt like crazy with any change of weather or movement. It bends back to only about a 45 degree angle … making putting my palm flat on anything (think pushing open a door or trying to do yoga) … impossible. The brain info highway in that arm is one extraordinarily gnarled traffic jam … info meant for my fingers gets lost in translation. The brain sends the message for me to wave at a person with that left hand … and instead the message received says, SLAP SELF IN FACE! If I carried a hanger or picked up an empty file folder the wrong way – that shoulder would dislocate. It always went back into place – eventually – an hour, a day, a month later. But this has been going on now for all these years. I’ve had back pain since my early twenties. My knees groaned even before I was pregnant or gained weight or tore my meniscus. One adrenaline stoked misstep and I’ve had a lifetime of … oh, my aching …
Good enough they said. Yeah, not so good enough.
And tonight, as I was making these oh-so-yummy lacy oatmeal cookies … I picked up said spoon and that damn shoulder went out again. Ridiculous. Thanks 1974 doctors! It’ll pop back in – eventually. It feels, as is apt, out of place … like it’s stuck on something. I’ll try to coax it back “in” … but sometimes that shoulder has a mind of its own and will take its sweet time.
In the meantime … I’ll eat another cookie and get into my onesie pajamas. No baby dolls for me and … no interns either!