Accidents Happen: Part One

     Everyone has accidents.  The nature of the accidents have to do with our age, where we live and what we were doing at the time.  I am thinking of the accidents that befell my brother and me as we were growing up in our ocean-side house in Hawaii.  I imagine some of our misfortunes were of the generic variety; skinned knees, sprained ankles, little fingers pinched in door ways; that sort of thing.  An accident can happen with something as innocent as a tether ball.

     In our front yard, for awhile when were were kids, our dad had set up a sturdy steel-poled tether ball set.  Timmy and I and our neighborhood gang wiled away many a pleasurable hour smacking the tether ball back and forth.  I quickly learned that the taller contestant had the upper hand as he could hit the ball in a higher arc which the shorter opponent couldn't quite reach.  The final result was the ball quickly spinning itself tightly around the pole; followed by the tether-ball victory dance.  My brother and I were about the same size and height and our tether ball matches got quite spirited.

     One day as we were playing my brother went to hit the ball as it came winging toward him and, inexplicably, he missed the ball entirely.  His momentum threw him to the ground and as he put out his arm to break his fall, instead he broke his arm.  Oh boy!  Our first cast!  I'm pretty sure my brother got heartily tired of telling his school mates what had happened.  To make him feel better, we decorated his cast with witty sayings and crude drawings of him lying on the ground next to the tether ball set with a crooked arm.  Classmates joined in the fun with their signings of the cast also making fun of the poor little crippled boy.  

Below is an artist's rendering of that terrible accident.  I'm on the right.  Timmy's on the left and you can clearly see the compound fracture of the right radius and ulnar bones.

     I believe the itching was the worst part.  Tom solved the problem with a straightened coat hanger.  Thankfully he didn't break the skin down in there so he avoided infection, possible gangrene, necrosis and amputation.  For that I know we are both very thankful.  Our parents probably wouldn't have let us keep the tether ball if poor Timmy had to play with one arm...

     He broke his arm again a few years later sliding down the side of a steep dirt embankment above the waste area of Ricky Moore's house where we had built our plywood fort.  Our gang were the good kids on the block.  We were only out during the day playing ball sports or surfing and occasionally snorkeling above the wonderful coral reefs that fronted our neighborhood.  Back then the coral hadn't been vandalized by beady eyed arrivistes; stripping it of the colorful reef fish and live seashells that abounded in our youth.  

Here's part of the "good kids" gang.  Da Mayor's on the right with brother Timmy behind me.  The little guy in the plastic boat is our kid brother Randy.  He doesn't quite know it yet but we're about to send him out into the open ocean with the crashing waves on what we hope will be the first of many spirit quests.  On the left, you can see part of the pier we walk out to paddle our surfboards out to our neighborhood surf spot, second reef.  (we're standing on first reef)

     Ricky Moore's backyard was just the right size for a game of home-run derby.  The snug little fort we kids had built past where the lawn ended was made of salvaged four by eight sheets of plywood.  We had cut a few holes in it to let in some light.  Since it was only four feet high we had to duck-walk to get in through the entry and would then sit in there for a few minutes shooting the breeze till we realized we were idiots for sitting inside this dusty squat little structure when we could be outside in the glorious Hawaiian sun playing baseball.  In our version of home-run derby (a show popular on TV at the time) whoever managed to hit the ball so it landed on top of the fort was the winner and new home-run king.  

     My brother was in the outfield when Peter Brown, who was famous for purposely fouling off pitches he didn't like, hit one up and to the right of the fort.  It landed on the bluff above and Tom went up to retrieve it.  In the act of sliding back down, he broke his arm.  We all heard the crack, followed by a great wail of anguish and pain.  Poor Timmy; he was kind of a klutz growing up.  Another cast; another straightened coat hanger.

     But my brother was not done with himself yet.  One day we were on the other side of the island (Oahu) which was considered being in the country in those days.  We were visiting some relative of our step-mother and we were to entertain ourselves with her son.  He took us to this beach behind which was a seawall with cement steps leading down to the sand.  My brother had a glass coke bottle in his hand as he was descending the stairs.  The stairs were steep and wet from the ocean spray and my poor but beloved brother was still in his "klutz" phase.  You guessed it.  His feet slipped out from under him and he fell crashing to the cement stairs.  He put out his hand with the coke bottle in it.  The bottle broke and cut his hand down to the bone, severing tendons in the process.  He had to have a wire cable installed in his hand to stitch the tendons back together.  So in addition to this, his third cast, he had a stainless steel wire sticking out of his palm.  Once again with the straightened coat hanger but this time he had to be extra careful since there were stitches in their too.  Poor Timmy...  what a klutz... 

     OK.  We've had enough fun at Timmy's expense for now.  We'll get into the skateboard mishap and the trip to Puerto Rico on his first college Christmas break later...  I don't want the reader to have the impression that I was much too clever to avoid the pratfalls of youth.  On the contrary.  I had two notable misfortunes that involved stitches but no casts.  Mine both happened in the ocean.  One surfing; one bodysurfing.

     Our neighborhood surf spot was directly in front of our house about a third of a mile out where the outer reef was.  We had a lovely little fishing pier that took us out past the first reef to where the deeper water was.  From there we would jump off the end of the pier with our boards and paddle out to "second reef" where the "big boy" waves broke.  There weren't more than about fifteen or twenty of the neighborhood kids that surfed so at any one time there were plenty of waves for everybody.  Our coastal neighborhood was in the lee of Koko Head crater which formed the eastern arm of our bay.  On the other end of Mauanalua bay was the back side of Diamond Head.  Past that was Waikiki beach where we had taken surfing lessons from the famous Hawaiian beach boys    

     Being on the lee side of the island meant that the trade winds which blew almost constantly in Hawaii were off shore making for nice surfing waves when the Summer swell was in.  Late one afternoon there was a healthy offshore breeze and a decent swell running.  Timmy and I were out enjoying ourselves on our new Velzy surfboards that we had bought with yard work money; augmented, as I remember, with a contribution from Dad; to be worked off in the future.  I took off on a wave that was a little too steep for the angle of my board and it "pearl dived".  That's where the nose of the board is shoved under the water by the force of the wave.  The rider (me) falls off and the board rebounds skyward.  Because of the wind, all surfers are taught to stay under for a few seconds till the board has had a chance to fall back onto the water.  I waited a few seconds and then surfaced.  A moment later I felt my board come thudding down on my head.  My brother had seen the wipeout and told me later that it was the skeg (fin) of the board that came down directly on my head, hatchet style.  

     The board dealt me a sharp and painful blow and it made me very angry.  Spluttering and muttering I got back on my board and started to paddle back out.  I heard a shout from my brother and when I turned my head around to yell back at him in a very irritated voice, I could see what he was shouting about.  Blood was running down my head onto my back and dripping into the water.  

     I mentioned that our surf spot was about a third of a mile off shore.  A copious amount of blood in the water, the kind that springs from head wounds, is not the sort of thing you want what with sharks' amazing ability to smell blood in the water.  As quickly as possible we paddled back to the pier and headed home.  My father, an MD, took one look at my cut and pronounced it 
in need of stitches at the Emergency Room at Queen's Hospital.  Mom and Dad trundled me off to the emergency room, leaving Timmy behind to hold down the fort; hoping he wouldn't break anything...  like another arm... 

     Because my father was a well known Psychiatrist in Honolulu and did rounds in the Psychiatric ward, he and my mother, who had also been in the medical community before she married our dad, knew all the doctors.  I asked the emergency room doc if there was anyway he could do the stitching without shaving my head.  With a patronizing wink to my parents he said he thought that could be managed.  When he was done with the stitches he padded the wound with peroxide and said to come back in ten days to get the stitches out, at which point my father volunteered to do the job at home.  I looked in the mirror to see how much my saintly countenance was disfigured by this grievous head wound.  I was thrilled to see that the mixture of my blood and the peroxide had left the blond hair on top of my head pink.  "Bitchen!"  I thought.  "Wait till everybody at school sees my pink hair!  When they find out about my stitches and my near brush with death and our escape from the sharks, the fellas will be so envious and the girls... well, I should get some major sympathy from the babesters!"  If I play it right and Maria Hemmings hears about it, I might even be promoted to the A-list!

     So we're driving home; it's dark and for some reason I'm sitting in the front seat with my dad driving and step-mom is in the back.  We are about halfway down our neighborhood street when suddenly we see several sets of headlights looming toward us.  When my dad sees that these cars are not stopping he suddenly jams on the breaks.  I was not ready for this and pitched forward hitting my head on the windshield.  The cars coming towards us have also stopped.  My dad gets out to confront these joy-riding hoodlums only to find that what he was seeing was a bunch of shiny aluminum pie plates strung up across the road between two telephone poles.

     At this point my dad starts cussing; slams the door and strides over to the curb in front of the Cowens big front yard.  "COME OUT OF THERE YOU KIDS!  WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE AND WE ARE NOT LEAVING UNTIL YOU GET OUT HERE AND SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE!  MY SON IS SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT OF MY CAR.  WE HAVE JUST COME FROM THE EMERGENCY ROOM AT QUEENS AND HE HAS TWELVE STITCHES IN HIS HEAD.  I HAD TO SLAM ON THE BRAKES BECAUSE OF YOUR LITTLE PRANK AND HE HIT HIS HEAD ON THE WINDSHIELD.  GET OUT HERE NOW!  I KNOW YOU'RE ALL HIDING IN THE BUSHES.  MIKE!  GET OUT AND SHOW THEM YOUR STITCHES AND YOUR PINK HAIR!"

     A brief word to the reader.  We grew up in a small private neighborhood.  Just like in a small town, everybody knew everybody else.  The people who were now reluctantly leaving their hiding places in the bushes were the bad kids; the kids who got to stay out at night; smoke cigarettes; raid the liquor cabinet; and do sexual things together that were years away for me.  I was about to be paraded around in front of all the bad kids as an object of sympathy while my dad gave them a lecture.  Today, thinking back on this tragicomic incident, I'm reminded of that phrase "You'll never be able to eat lunch in this town again."  My father, of course, wasn't thinking about my part in all of this vis-a-vis the bad kids.  Namely, I might be an object of sympathy tonight with my stitches and my pink hair, but tomorrow in the harsh light of day, after the hoodlums had been forced to take down the pie plates under my father's wrathful eye, I would be persona non grata big time.  

     I could just imagine the scornful cat-calls that would be hurled my way as I walked down Portlock Road.  "There goes the little cry baby with the pink hair.  Poor little Stevens kid hit his widdew head!  Aah, poor baby!"  What really amazed me about this whole episode was how the force of my father's angry voice actually willed all the kids out of the bushes.  With growing alarm I began to realize what a calamity this was turning into.  There they all were like some sort of line-up of Portlock's Who's-who of junior hoodlums.  Dicky and Sheffy and Tobin and even Jojo Roberts who had been kind enough to give me a black eye several years earlier.  Plus there was Kinau and Stefanie and even Betty Ann who I had been harboring a secret crush on.  "Great!", I thought to myself.  "I am so dead tomorrow."

     I must say, secretly I was thrilled to see these wild ruffians who were contemptuous of everything good in the world (at least in my mind, at the time) crawling out of the bushes and sitting side-by-side on the Cowens front lawn while being lectured in the sternest voice I have ever heard my dad use.  "My dad", I thought, "Giving it to the Portlock Road punks for causing me to hit my head on the windshield.  If that isn't love, I don't know what is.  Bitchen!  You go, Dad!  Let 'em know how bad and evil they are.  I'll deal with the fall-out tomorrow."

     Several years later my brother and I were at one of our two body-surfing beaches, Makapuu.  The other beach was known as Sandy Beach.  It was about a five minute car ride from our house.  You may have seen President Obama riding waves in Hawaii on one of his vacations; that was Sandy Beach. Anyway, the swell was running at four to five feet which was about optimum for Makapuu.  I caught a nice wave with a rideable right shoulder.  So I'm happily barreling along going right.  As the shore-break wave starts to curl above me I start my pull-out.  This involves diving down in front of the wave and doing a half turn as you hit the water.  That way as the wave breaks above you, you're crouched on the bottom hugging the sand, ready to spring seaward leaving the breaking wave behind you.  This maneuver almost always works well and it allows the bodysurfer to avoid being sucked into what we called the washing machine.  That's where you get caught and sucked back into the whitewater and hurled around like clothes in the washing machine.  If that happens you can expect seaweed in your hair and in your trunks and sandy water up your nose and count yourself lucky if your swim fins don't get sucked off your feet.

Here's a picture of the leader of the Western World bodysurfing at one of the local beaches, Sandy Beach, about a five minute drive from our house.  Go Prez!  Uh huh!  You da man; you da MAN!

     At the last moment, as I was starting my bail-out, I see another bodysurfer barreling right towards me from the opposite direction.  We collided head on.  Stevie Wilcox, a fellow Portlock Roadian, was a year or so younger than I and a bit smaller.  However, he was part Hawaiian which meant, at least according to local Hawaiian lore, that he had thicker skin.  He got knocked out for a second but came to before CPR had to be administered.  I, on the other hand, with my thinner Haole (Caucasion) scalp suffered another head wound.  After I got to shore brother Timmy took a quick look top-side and pronounced my cut in need of stitches.  Once again; another head wound and more copious bleeding.  The scar tissue from my previous head wound had given way with this latest insult and the two scars crossed, leaving me with a big X on my scalp.

Here's just what I looked like when I looked up and saw Stevie Wilcox barreling right towards me for our head-on collision.  Ouch!

     We drove home in our little pea-green VW bug with me riding shot-gun, the window open and my head hanging out so I wouldn't bleed on the interior.  As we turned into our driveway, our little brother Randy was practicing his rookie bike riding skills.  He took one look at my bloody head, shrieked and crashed his bike into the bushes.  As Timmy was parking the car, my mother came rushing out of the house, having heard Randy's cry.  "Oh my God!  What happened to you boys?!"  My brother told her he was fine it was just me with all the blood.  Before I continue this story I should let the reader know that I had a certain affinity for the dramatic.  Because I was in the oven for ten months before birth, my brother always maintained that I should have been born a Leo.  Leos are supposed to make the best actors.  As my mother rushed up to where I sat with my head resting on the car's windowsill; still bleeding profusely, with a baleful stare I raised my head, looked at my mother and said; "SHARK!".

     I'm not really sure what came over me.  Perhaps I wanted her to show me the same kind of concern my father had with my first head wound.  When she found out the truth I was lucky to be bleeding copiously at the time or they're might have been more blood shed.  To say that my step-mother was not amused at my ploy would be an understatement.  So off we go to Queen's Hospital Emergency Room again for some more stitches and pink hair.