The Best Time I Fell Down a Hill in a Back Brace
by Rebecca Pedersen
I crouched at the top of the hill on my middle school’s campus where everyone ate lunch. I had a wedgie and was too embarrassed to pick at it, because every move I made while wearing my back brace generated a clunking sound that I feared attracted attention. So, I decided to surreptitiously make a pull for my undies as I loudly sat down, rationalizing that the normal noise I made every lunch hour would mask any suspicious hand movements. In doing this, I lost my balance and fell backward in slow motion, and then rolled in very fast motion to the bottom of this hill. I stopped only because I got lodged in a rain gutter, where I remained stuck on my back like a tipped-over turtle.
To say my middle school years were awkward is an understatement. In addition to the run-of-the-mill dorky braces, greasy hair, ill-fitting clothes, and acne issues everybody got, I spent half of eighth grade in what I guarantee is the bulkiest back brace that ever existed. My twelfth year on earth greeted me with a rare, very noticeable spinal deformity that required a major surgery. I had kyphosis, which is like scoliosis, except you fall forward instead of to the side. The upper half of an average person’s spine gently curves at about 40 degrees; mine curled into an astonishing 110 — a record-breaking number! my orthopedic surgeon would excitedly tell me later. By the way, can he take a picture of me for the research he’s hoping to publish? Yes, eighth grade was awkward.
It’s assumed my spine lurched forward because I hit my growth spurt eons before most people do — when I was a small child, my pediatrician even misdiagnosed me with gigantism and projected I would be a soaring seven-and-a-half feet tall. Prior to taking me to the orthopedic surgeon who would eventually straighten me out, my mom first sought out physical therapists, an acupuncturist, and a crotchety doctor, all of whom diagnosed me with low self-esteem. Because I was so freakishly tall at such a young age, everyone assumed I was embarrassed of my height and thus slumped. And it’s true: I did have unique body issues. While most preteen girls are worrying about whether they have an apple- or a pear-shaped butt, I was wigging out that my torso was uncontrollably rounding itself into a donut despite the fact that I was trying my darndest in physical therapy.
When I finally did visit my soon-to-be orthopedic surgeon at the UCLA Children’s Hospital, his immediate response was (my paraphrase), “So, no one told you this is actually a serious medical condition? That your spinal cord is partially exposed and your lungs are being crushed under the weight of your breaking bones? And that you’ll need a majorly invasive surgery before you suffocate and/or become paralyzed and/or never get a first kiss because you’re so hunched over your head is practically between your knees and who would kiss that?” I said, “Nope.” He followed with (again, my paraphrase), “Well, that’s what’s happening. Here’s your hospital gown. Have some Valium!”
Eleven anesthetized hours, 13 vertebrae fusions, and 47 metal rods later, I was four inches taller, had zero hunchbacks, and couldn’t wait to reveal my new, ruler-straight bod to my classmates. The catch: I first had to wear a back brace until my bones fully healed. And this was no ordinary back brace. This was a custom-made, over the collarbones, past the hips, full body back brace — so unyielding I couldn’t fit into desks, and so difficult to unlatch myself from that I had to see the school nurse every time I needed to pee. The part of this situation I found to be the most stressful, however, was that my friends ate lunch every day on the side of this small hill, and sitting down required a level of concentration I never fully mastered.
You’re probably thinking, “Okay, so if you’re stuck in this nearly-impossible-to-maneuver back brace, why are you hanging out on hills?” Well, friend, one fact you may remember about middle school (assuming you didn’t emotionally repress it) is that you don’t draw extra attention to your abnormalities. At least, I didn’t. I had zero interest in being a special snowflake. As such, my response to dealing with the “we eat lunch on the side of the hill” situation was to go with it. I’m sure my buddies were wondering what was up, given that they watched me struggle in every class to perch on the elevated, makeshift desks all my teachers had to MacGyver using stacks of textbooks and stools from their break lounge, but like most weird middle schoolers who want to fly under the radar, no one suggested we break routine and instead sit at a picnic table.
And so that’s how I found myself attempting to sit down in a way that wouldn’t draw attention to the fact that I was also picking underwear out of my butt. An important thing to note about this hillside is where it was positioned in relation to everyone I deemed important: my friends ate lunch at the top of the hill. A short wall ran down the hillside to its base, which is where all the popular kids flirted while flashing their shiny hair and pristine Adidas Originals. I was probably distracted by this image of perfectness when I sat, because I did not angle myself properly like I had practiced so many times.
When I eventually stopped rolling thanks to that rain gutter, I froze for a second and then began to flail my arms wildly, in a panic. Someone — a teacher? I don’t remember because I blacked out from embarrassment — eventually helped me to my feet. I tried to lower my head in shame but physically couldn’t because of the back brace. So, I marched (the back brace also prevented me from swinging my legs like a normal person) up to the top of the hill with my head pulled back. Because of this forced, robotic body movement, I think I unintentionally looked really unfazed by the whole incident. In retrospect, this is probably what saved me — no one ever brought it up.
Rebecca Pederson lives in San Francisco and is an editor at Yelp. She publishes the food puns her bosses reject (as well as some other stuff) on her blog.
Photo by Anton Gvozdikov, via Shutterstock
