On Dangerous Childhood

My grandpa dropped me when I was a baby. I didn’t find out about it until I was in university (I lost all my grandparents before I was 10). I read about it in a letter my grandma wrote to my mother. My grandma sounded very upset about it.

I burned my wrist while playing around in a garbage hole in our backyard when I was 3 or 4. Back then every household seemed to have a garbage hole where people threw the garbage into and burned it when the hole got too full. I don’t know why I was playing there. Bored, maybe? I don’t remember having a lot of toys when I was a kid.

Around the same time, I hurt the back of my head while we were visiting someone. I was sitting on an ottoman but I guess I didn’t remember that ottomans had no back. I leaned back and bonk! I fell on my head. Hard. I didn’t pass out but the back of my head got squishy and it stayed squishy for some time. My mother lost a lot of weight worrying about me.

I don’t remember how many times I broke my lips running into a street sign post when I was a kid. All I remember is it happened a lot. I got distracted way too easily. I still do.

My childhood friends, my older brother and I used to play hopscotch using pieces of asbestos as counters. Yes, asbestos.

When I was in elementary school, a teacher broke a thermometer in front of us just so that he could pass the tiny blob of mercury around the class because he thought it was highly educational.

And that, my faithful readers, is the kind of childhood I had and surprisingly survived.