In my misspent youth I used to think casts were Merit Badges. In my really early days, arms and legs in casts were usually associated with the wounded returning from World War Two - beyond doubt, heroes one and all. Later I connected them more with soccer and rugby injuries, the owners of which were, beyond doubt, heroes one and all. Much later in life, I came to the sad realization that many of the soccer/rugby damages were incurred not during the game but afterwards in a drunken pub brawl. So .... not heroes one and all; not all Merit Badges.
The three casts which I have had so far in my life, and I certainly hope to have no necessity for more, were most definitely not merit badges; nothing whatsoever to do with heroics.
The first, which I have written about before so will not fully detail, would at best qualify for an Inattention Badge. I earned it seven years ago, walking around a hilly campground in the flat light of dusk. I really needed to take more notice of the rocky path on which I walked, and the steep drop-off at it's edge. But no! I peered through the early moonlight at swooping birds, and up at the scudding clouds which seemed to leap across the sky in that Wyoming wind. Crack! I heard the bone go at the same instant as I felt my foot doubling beneath me at a dangerous angle as I, helplessly, sat down firmly on it. No, not a Merit Badge, that ensuing cast.
Then three or four years ago, overzealous in a doubles ping-pong game, I propelled myself sideways at the fastest speed I could create. I was determined to make it to the far side of the room to hit that feisty little white ball right back to the far side of the table. But before I got there, my sideways-moving leading foot caught on the indoor-outdoor carpet on which we were playing and I crashed into the point where the floor meets the wall. I met both the floor and the wall. Crack! I heard that most unwelcome sound as I hit the floor and looked sadly at the rapidly-swelling wrist - the right one, of course.
'Oh,' I heard my voice saying, calmly, 'I think I broke my wrist.'
No, not a Merit Badge for that cast either. I know you can't drag your feet sideways at speed on a carpet, albeit of the indoor/outdoor variety. No merit; no heroics. More likely a Stupidity Award, or, being kind, a Poor Judgment Badge.
Now I find myself in my third and, I certainly hope, final, cast. No crack! this time. Just a lot of pain. I didn't know I'd done it and tried to convince myself, and Betsy, that somehow, unknown to myself, I had sprained it. Anyway, as Storytime progressed last Monday, we dashed off to Kaiser where I was told, most definitely, that it was broken. Betsy reminded them that I had broken this same bone a few years back. They brought up the x-ray. Identical with today's. A small fracture line runs across the base of the fibula and down towards the tip. How, I wonder, can a small break in a small bone create such pain and consequent disruption of my life? How, I wonder simultaneously, can it be so identical to the the break of seven years ago?
I am told that sometimes the bone appears to be completely healed but is in fact not. Then it can break again for little reason. The most frequent causes of this incomplete healing are diabetes and lifelong smoking, neither of which apply to me. I offer lifelong drinking as an alternative. He agrees that can cause many bad things but not this one. He falls back into default mode; sometimes it's just the luck of the draw.
So my current cast is no Merit Badge; neither is it any kind of de-merit. Apparently, it's the result of one of life's situations at which you can do no more than shrug and say, oh well. It's one of those things we learn to do over a lifetime; accept that there is not always going to be a reason, or none that we can accept. We've done everything right and still everything goes wrong. We shrug it off.
I am happy to be the proud owner of a Shrug Badge.
© August 1016
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