Embarrassing Mistake (something you broke) - by Mom

Personal history question : did you ever break anything , such as a window? The home I grew up in, on the west -side outskirts of Evansville, Indiana, was a two-storey white clapboard house on an odd-shaped lot, next to an aging dwindling farm.

The backyard was grassy and bordered by numerous trees, separating our backyard from the farmhouse's front yard. There was an ancient peach tree, producing almost no peaches but lots of thick sap. It had a low bowl of 3 or 4 very thick branches coming out if the trunk and this was one of my favorite places to read and hide from chores.

One spring day, I had been nestled in the tree with a book, and decided to go into the house. There was a set of concrete steps leading up to the back door. It must have been still a bit chilly weather, because instead of the screen door, the storm door was in place. It was a wooden frame door with eight large panes of glass. I was running up the steps, tripped on the top step and, in putting my arm out to catch myself, instead crashed my hand and forearm through one of the glass panes. I remember quite well the shape of the glass shard that was still in the frame. My wrist was bleeding a little, and in alarm, I pulled my arm back through the space, across that sticking-up piece of glass.

{Mom drew a picture, which I am still figuring out how to get on here in an easily accessible way!  It kind of looks like a drawing of the above picture with some blood colored onto the bottom center shard poking straight up.  : )}

Arm in. Arm out.
There was a great hue and cry. My mother's friend Liz Grunwald, was over visiting and she had some background in science, although I think it was chemistry, not anything actually medical. Nevertheless, she was calm, she wrapped my arm in a towel, and drove my mother and me to the hospital emergency room. I wonder now who stayed with her children while she drove us, but I don't remember. A nurse poured green liquid soap into the wound and scrubbed it with a stiff brush, and that hurt worse than the injury, the stitches or anything else. The doctor came in and stitched it up. There were three cuts, one small one close to the wrist and two parallel lacerations in the middle of my inner forearm. It took over twenty stitches; I didn't watch.

After it was all bandaged, my dad picked up up at the hospital. It didn't hurt and I just went about my usual 11 year old stuff the rest of the night. I had instructions not to lift anything, and I didn't, but in the course of playing, little brother Jimmy was about to fall off a chair and I caught him. Nothing happened at that moment, but in the middle of the night , I woke up to find the whole big bandage and my bed sheets soaked in blood. We went back to the ER . The stitches in the little cut had pulled open, causing a slow ooze. My arm was restitched, and when I returned to school, I had quite the show and tell.

That was not the first or last clumsy thing I ever did to break something, but it was probably the most memorable.

Another breaking incident occurred when owns a freshman in college. I had a childhood crush on William F. Buckley., who was a brilliant conservative political writer , much admired by pretty much all the adults I knew. When I got to St. Louis University, I discovered there was a chapter of his organization for students -- Young Americans for Freedom. I can talk about the politics of the day in another piece, but this club was mainly social. I was recruited by Mimi Federer, and by default went into the yearbook as one of the officers.

I never did anything official, except help her with a party for the club members at her house just before Christmas break. As the party got started, her mother asked me to carry the punch bowl (FULL!) from the kitchen to the party area. And I dropped it and broke it, and all the punch spilled, all over me, the floor and the tablecloth. To this day, when I think of it, I have the feeling that the bowl broke before I dropped it, but of course no one knows that for sure but the angels in heaven. Everyone was very nice about it, but of course I was mortified. I sometimes still blush when I recall the moment!

Now as I have written this little story, it occurs to me for the first time, Who fills a punch bowl and carries it to the table?? Not an experienced host. You place the punch bowl on the table, mix the punch in a pitcher in the kitchen, and pour it into the bowl in situ. But I didn't known that then and evidently, neither did Mimi or her mother!