Breaking the Fall

Sunshine Joe
Aug 8, 2017 · 4 min read
(Source: Etsy)

Like most families, my sisters and I grew up sharing bedrooms and sleeping in bunkbeds. The only problem with this innocent arrangement was the fact that I was pretty famous for falling out of the top bunk on a regular basis.

In fact, I’m so good at falling out of beds, that I fell out of bed just this week. I was attempting to fly over the many pillows supporting my back in order to shut off an alarm, and I instead overshot the edge and inelegantly landed on one knee.

Told you. Famous.

I’ve seen the fancy bunkbeds available for children now — with their safety bars and nonsense. In the eighties, the wooden bunks we suffered with not only had splinters, but the “safety bar” was little more than a two-inch piece of wood just above the top of the mattress.

I did my best to protect myself from falls and monsters by creating a barrier made of stuffed toys along the edge of that two-inch wood bar, but it did little to help me. I was also small enough to fall through the side along the wall, but I would mostly just get stuck there, and frighten my sister a bit.

I would also try to avoid that wall, though. It was her booger wall.

One night, I fell into the darkness and onto our mini wooden children’s piano. That thing was well built though, and we both somehow survived. Made a terrible musical noise, woke up the house, and it hurt like a summbitch.

The only other night that really stands out to me, as far as falls from my top bunk go, was the night my mom actually broke down and took me to the emergency room. Now this must have been quite a fall, since I don’t remember it, my dad wasn’t home so she had to take ALL of us to the hospital in the middle of the night, and I actually thought my life was ending as I wore red footy pajamas without the footy parts.

Let me back up…

Rather than buy us new footy pajamas as we grew, my mom would just cut the feet off of our footy pajamas. Yes, it is as cheap and terrible as it sounds — but pretty smart if you want to stop buying jammies for your kids all the time.

Also, that night I don’t know what kind of noise I made falling out of bed. It must have been quite a lot, and it was either not painful enough to wake me, OR so damaging that it made me sleep harder.

I’m guessing the latter, since I woke up with my mom and sisters standing over me — both feet cold from being exposed to the elements.

“What the hell?” mom was looking down on me, a crying baby in her arms. “Did you fall out of your damn bed again?”

Cleary, I had.

I was mortified, and very sleepy and confused. But when I tried to get up, I found that I couldn’t. It was like my body was frozen to the ground, like one of the little baby birds that falls out of the nest in the dark night, and wakes up stuck to the cold earth in the morning.

I panicked, and started to just roll back and forth — like a Weeble Wobble who did fall down. My god. I was now a cripple. Yep, I knew this would happen someday. My laissez-faire attitude toward fast Big Wheels and daring tree climbs would have led me here eventually.

Realizing that this was more serious than usual, mom bundled us all up into the van and drove the 15 miles to the hospital in the next town. She had carried me to my seat from home, but wouldn’t be able to carry me into the ER. I was able to walk a bit by then, and distinctly remember crawling on my hands and feet on the cold tile into the dark, quiet reception area.

I had already accepted my fate as the town hunchback and was ready to face my fears of doctors, needles, casts, x-rays, bone cutting, amputation, blood letting, and whatever else was waiting for me.

The rest of the evening is hazy. At one point, dad arrived from his overnight trip from work. I remember focusing a lot on the gold cross sitting in the nurse’s chest hair. Once, I asked if I’d need a wheelchair, and how much this would cost my family.

I was fine.

Dad carried me home after all the x-rays came back showing I would live a relatively normal life, as far as my physical body was concerned.

And when we got back home, he immediately deposited me in that damn bunkbed again.

Sunshine Joe

Rated PG-13 Mom with self-diagnosed hypochondria; occasional Illustrator; Writer of sci-fi & bad poetry; Project Manager during the workday

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