Toddler Prison...

Toddler Prison...

I spent most of my toddler phase inside a plaster prison... My bodycast was my mobile home, a canvass for get-well wishers, and a shell for this hermit-crab-to-be... Whether it was weeks or months or years, I am not sure... The mind of a child cannot easily perceive linear time, and these memories are much more like myths to me anyway... They are true legends, which I find difficult to doubt, though I never quite know for certain which elements are 'true' and which are, 'legendary'...

My 6 year old brother and my 2+ year old self were home alone, or may as well have been... Our babysitter Bruce was a wacky drunk who by today's standards would have never been allowed near a child... He was the type who once gave me vodka when I asked for a glass of water... There is another story of how he pushed me to the ground while teaching me to walk... I try to give the man some benefit and less doubt, though the last we saw of Bruce was when his pet lion attacked someone and he was hauled away to jail... That I am NOT kidding about...

So my brother and I were playing on our bunkbed... I was climbing the ladder, like an eager 2 year old is inclined to do... Somehow my leg got caught in the rung while the rest of me fell, which snapped my femur quite cleanly... This Newtonian plummet was apparently all my doing, though I have to wonder what a 6 year old brother would say to not be in trouble when negligent mom came home... I don't know much more than that... Bruce was probably roused from his passed out dreams of dancing girls and edible philosophy, only to race me drunkenly to the hospital... Drunk driving was not such a taboo 33 years ago, I guess...

I spent my 3^rd birthday in the hospital... Why they chose a bodycast for an upper leg fracture, I can only wonder... Perhaps it was my urge to squirm, or maybe it was a chance for free daycare... I wouldn't be able to burn the house down for at least nine months, heh heh... It's very likely I got a lot of love during this prison sentence, and I certainly was the highlight of every artistic graffiti tagger with a color crayon... My pristine white plaster was soon littered with various sentiments like 'Get Well Soon...' This is a real irony to me, that I might have learned to read (backwards in the mirror?) from the innocent hopes of the get-well-wishers... I healed as fast as I did, so to have someone wish it sooner would have been to focus on the broken leg, eh? I think maybe 'Get Well' would have sufficed... Or perhaps, 'Be yourself' would have been a nice message for my formative phase...

But I did heal... Months later, like a moth emerging from a cocoon, I was able to hobble about like a normal 3 year old parolee... Not longer did I have to shit through a hole in my cast, or have people stare at my little flagpole while they signed their name... No longer did I have to be carried around on every errand like a fragile sack of cement... I soon began to run and play with the other children, though my legs have always been gangly and a bit undernourished...

Weeks later, to my mom's horror and others' amusement, I could be observed running crookedly and falling down a lot... This became a problem, and I was taken to see Dr. Eders, who said my leg had grown back a different length than my unbroken one... 'Jeez!' I may have thought... 'Enough with the pedia-tricks, doc! I just wanna run and play!' I almost remember when Eders explained to me how the leg would have to be broken again to fix it up... I would get a cool scar as a reward, and a steel pin that never DID set off the airport security detectors... Before long I was back in a plaster prison, though this time it was only a leg cast... Apparently I had earned my lighter sentence, as an inmate gets off for good behavior...

I don't think I embellished this tale, though I have recounted it to the best of my ability... My family holds to this version, with my brother knowing less but being more willing to go there in conversation... My mother had a disconnect somewhere between then and now, locking her secrets within her enigmatic mind... I have spent years wondering what effect this jailtime had on my early childhood development... I mean, did it help define who I am, or did I overcome to find identity and definition? Was it more painful for my older brother, who has ever remained near the shallows? Or for myself, having been plunged into the darkness only to discover a nocturnal wonderland? The crux of the matter is the crutch, and even while writing this I hardly know what I mean... But I said it, so it must be important, heh heh...

A couple years ago I wrote a song, which I never recorded... I will share it now as it relates directly to my rugrat incarceration... It is called 'BodyCast...'

BodyCast...   8-14-06

I lie there for weeks on end...

The cast is my only friend...

Is this what stillness is supposed to be?

Will ya wipe my ass for me?

Needy for graffiti... Autograph my tomb...

This fetid plaster like a mother's womb...

Toddlers ought to be running free...

Not trapped in a cocoon for all to see...

Cast my body on the water...

I'll come back twice as full...

Cast my body on the water...

I'll come back twice as full...

Accidental mentality...

Broken legs of a ladder...

Crutch is such a personality...

Help me be helpless again...

Caught in a waking coma...

Three years old and I can't recall...

The evil medieval medicine...

For a boy performing, like Newton's ball...

Cast my body on the water...

I'll come back twice as full...

Cast my body on the water...

I'll come back twice as full...

In this reflective period of my adult life, I chose to see the bodycast experience as a way to develop inner stillness... It has become a powerful tool in looking inward, in ceasing activity and focusing on subtleties... Perhaps without such a powerful metaphor as childhood trauma, I may not have been able to dive down and spelunk the depths of existence... I am even willing to speculate that maybe I subconsciously broke my own leg in order to learn the art of stillness... The very idea makes me shudder, but I am not afraid of concepts, even if they are unlikely...

Today I can look at my left upper leg and see a nine-inch scar running down its length... It used to go from hip to knee, it seems like... It's all I have left as my souvenir, along with a fun story of pain and imprisonment... I have never broken another bone, though my manner of living suggests that many should have been broken throughout my life... I have to chalk it all up to a funny sort of fate, the same which causes the sun to shine on the desert and on the deserving... I am grateful I can walk today... And in a greater sense, I am ever appreciative of being mortal... I find that to see my impending death is to truly live, and to see my impending life is to live truly... I find I come full circle with every chapter, and at the end of this one, I will be glad I was rebroken... I no longer have to run in circles...