I Turned Out Just Fine
And other lies I used to believe
Before I could begin the process of healing, I needed to dismantle the myth that, despite the trauma I’d endured as a kid, I’d turned out just fine.
When I was too young to remember, I dislocated my shoulder. Or, perhaps more accurately, my shoulder was somehow dislocated. As family lore goes, I was home with my father, who had left me on the couch looking at the “Funny Papers” section of the newspaper and gone into another room. Moments later, I began wailing and he ran to my side, only to find me inconsolable. He could find no source for my distress, and so he rushed me to the hospital.
Mean Mothers’ Jerk, the doctor called the injury, which apparently had become normalized enough in the early 1980s that, rather than call child protective services, hospital staff chuckled and gave it a cheeky name. I can only imagine the knowing look the nurses exchanged over my father’s shoulder before moving on to the next patient.
I’ve been assured many times over the years that, despite its colloquial name, my father did not in fact cause this injury — that it just happened somehow. I’ve always been a bit uneasy with many parts of this story, from the mysterious nature of the injury to…
