Broken Nose

Back when I was around 4 years old my nose got broken. My dad coached a baseball team for the American Legion which my brother Mike played on. I often went along to the games, mainly to run around and play with other kids. At one particular game somewhere out in the boonies of Wayne County, I was playing chase with another kid on a playground slide. I remember being at the top of the slide and waking up at the bottom on the ground, face up. Apparently, I had taken a tumble down the slide and plowed face-first into the gravely dirt. I was carried – stretcher-like – and loaded into the back of a van (Mr. Hunt’s green cargo van) and taken to the closest hospital. At the hospital I was checked out and taken for X-Rays. It was at that point that I began to panic because I was being taken somewhere without my parents. Before that I remember being calm, cool, and collected, and just sort of “went along for the ride”.

I spent the next few days in the hospital, recovering from a broken nose and (apparently) serious concussion, because I recall not feeling well at all for a couple days. Didn’t want much to do with anything or anybody. Some young guy with a broken leg would wheel in and say hi to me occasionally, but I was not interested in the least until I started feeling better, then I socialized a little bit. I have no idea who he was or why he took an interest in me. Perhaps I shared the room with him, I dunno. Also, someone from my family – father, mother, big sister – was always with me, 24x7.

I remember that on the day before I checked out, the doctor very carefully took little stones out that had been buried into the end of my nose like I had been hit with shotgun shot. The obvious result of hitting the gravel with my face at the bottom of the slide. Here’s a picture of me in my hospital bed. What doesn’t show up well are the bruises on my face, like I had just lost an ultimate fighting match or something.