Leg Up

I've never really broken a bone. I guess that's already not true exactly, because I have some recollection of being told I had broken something, but I think it was some minor hairline fracture or something. I don't count that. It seems to me like it's got to be a compound fracture of an arm or a leg to really count. If not a compound, it's got to be the severest possible case of whatever it is that is less than that.

I really don't think I've had one of those. In grade school and before, a broken arm or leg was a real boost for one's social life. You showed up to school with a cast, and it was a whirlwind of activity from there. You had the whole story of how it happened to tell, and you could tell it again and again to the whole gamut of the school's student body and faculty. You also got everyone to sign it, and that was like getting your yearbook early.

That never happened for me, and I never really was too popular in school. I don't have any baggage about having been bullied, because I never particularly was, but I was never very popular, and maybe having busted an arm or a leg might have helped that. It's true that such an injury would have been very painful and prematurely ended any hopes of athletic prowess, but those hopes ended eventually anyway.

Maybe I'm whistling past the graveyard here, for I could still suffer such an injury, and there couldn't be a worse time for it. I've finally found my "tribe", as it were, so there's no need to artificially boost my popularity. Moreover, an injury would really put the brakes on my suddenly developing career. Maybe worst of all, I don't have the fancy insurance that I did as a boy, and so it all adds up to the realization that a broken limb is not (or cannot) happen for me.