snippet ... kindergarten~

This one is under the Chapter SCHOOLING

KINDERGARTEN CAN BE HARD ON A CHILD

. . . one other incident, that memory serves, that would come back to haunt me 30 years later.  I fell off the big swings and landed on my knees in Kindergarten.   I wasn't taken to the doctor because everyone just figured I had bruised myself up from the fall; but kids were kids and we get scraped up.  Wash the dirt off, put on a bandage to stop the bleeding, give a kiss to heal the boo boo and send them out the door to play.  That was the way.  We were never running to the doctors office.  If you were still breathing and not bleeding uncontrollably, or having a bone sticking out somewhere, it was usually a home fix-up.   I remember hobbling around and stumbling with scraped up knees for some time after that.

I became a very clumsy child.   There were many incidents of riding my bike and my legs would all of a sudden not want to pedal anymore; or they would seem to lock up on me.   I would be riding along suddenly to find myself pushing down on the brake when I didn't intend on braking.  This often ended with me flying head over tea kettle into a ditch or onto the blacktopped pavement.  There were incidents of my knee caps seeming to pop out of place all the time for no apparent reason.  Sometimes it really hurt to walk up and down stairs.  I never complained about it though because I just figured I was a clumsy kid and what could anyone do about that.

Come to find out 30 years later, as my knees would become inflamed and swollen so bad after doing any amount of standing or walking, I finally went to a doctor to see what was the matter with me.  A set of x-rays were taken and the first question that the orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Peter Melcher asked me was, "When did you break your knee caps?" "What?  I broke my knee caps?"

He showed me the scarring evidence.  There they were, two little triangular bones in the center of my legs with jagged scars completely across the entire patella showing that they had healed over; but undoubtedly had both been completely broken in half.  It also showed by the scar tissue that the breaks were multiple breaks, showing that they would begin to heal only to become fractured again and again.  Then to make matters worse, they both had quit growing.  Here I was, a 30 year old woman with the knee caps of a 10 year old.  After six knee surgeries, three on each leg, over a time span of the next four years my little knee caps were finally removed and my walking seemed to be less stressful.  Only to become an issue again in my late 40's as arthritis and bursitis set into the joints.

Yes, Kindergarten can be very hard on a child.

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That's today's snippet from the book I'm trying to put together for my family :)

Life ~ it's not always a bowl of cherries ...  (as Erma Bombeck would say) ... sometimes it's the pits.

Until next time ...
So it goes in my neck of the woods.
~mel