My first brush with the law-Part One

When I was thirteen years old, I severely broke my leg. Smack dab in the middle of the bottom half of my leg. I broke both of the bones down there; the tibia and fibula (I had to took the names up).

It was a spiral break too.  Apparently, I was very lucky it wasn’t a compound fracture. You know the kind where the bones break the skin. I shudder at the thought. 

Anyway, the break was bad enough that I had to have a very large plaster cast placed on my leg. It had to immobilize the two surrounding joints (my knee and my ankle) so it went from the very tip of my toes all the way up to the top of my thigh. 

Needless to say, I couldn’t go to school with this cast because it was so heavy. Anytime I stood up, I was in hysterics because it hurt so bad. 

And I won’t even go into detail about going to the bathroom.

Forget showering too. For three weeks, I had to take sponge baths and wash my hair in the sink. Let me rephrase, I had to have someone wash my hair in the sink. 

Lest you not forget, I was thirteen at the time. A very critical time in a young adolescent girl’s life. Critical especially in terms of personal hygiene. And I had none during this horrible time. 

So I was out of school for a little over a month. I had a tutor come to the house with some of my school work but the majority of my time was spent watching T.V. The best thing was that this was the heyday of Luke and Laura on General Hospital so my time was not wasted. At least not too much. 

My parents were both working at the time and finding care for me during the day presented somewhat of a challenge. Luckily, we had some great neighbors who pitched in. 

One Monday (yes, I remember vividly the day of the week), I had a doctor’s appointment around lunch time. In order to not overburden our friendly neighbors, my parents and I agreed I would be okay at home by myself for a few hours while my dad went into the office for the morning. 

I was set up very nicely in my parents’ bedroom with a mini cooler of drinks by the bedside and the T.V. set on my favorite channel. There were no remotes back them. 

My parents left for work and my siblings went to school. I just laid there killing brain cells while watching soaps and game shows. 

About midway through the morning, the front door bell started ringing. It rang and it rang. 

Now with this huge cast on, there was no way I could navigate the stairs in our house on my own. Plus, my parents had instructed me not to answer the door. So I blithely continued to watch my shows.

A short while later, the side doorbell started ringing (we had different doorbells for the front and side doors). Again, I ignored it. 

Let me add at this time, we had two dogs. One was a very sweet golden retriever named Wheezy, who liked to bark but was actually very timid. The other was a dachsund named Shanna, who was also pretty much a scaredy-cat. 

The whole time the doorbells have been ringing, they’ve been barking like crazy. They also keep coming into my parents’ room looking at me to do something and then back out to the landing at the top of the stairs. 

Next thing I know, I hear someone coming up the staircase at the back of our house. I knew it was ours because we had metal stairs back there and they made a fairly distinctive noise when being climbed. 

This is when I knew I was in trouble. How, you may ask?

Well, my dad (like my current husband) has a tendency to lose things. And see, well, he had lost his keys recently. The back door was unlocked so my dad could get back into the house to take me to my doctor’s appointment. 

Being the very mature and insightful teenager I was, I kept hoping against hope that this was just my dad returning home. 

Until I heard a voice I didn’t recognize telling my dogs “Be quiet, doggies. Just be quiet.”

Panic sets in at this point. I realize I’ve got to do something. 

So I come up with the brilliant idea of hiding in my parents’ closet which was a very short distance from their bed. 

To make matters worse, my highly intelligent dogs, Wheezy and Shanna, keep running from the top of the stairs into the bedroom, barking and looking at me. All I can keep thinking is “Why don’t you advertise a little more that I’m up here?”

I swing my encased-in-plaster, extremely heavy leg off the bed without thinking. It makes a very loud thump as it smacks down on the floor, to say nothing about the pain. 

I realize now I’m probably working under a time limit. I start thumping my way with my crutches to the closet. I get in the closet and I realize I have a dilemma facing me. How do I get the door shut?

I need to use both hands to stay up on the crutches. Plus my mom and dad have all these clothes hanging off the door. There’s no way I can close the thing. 

Luckily for me, my dad has left an old pair of underwear hanging on the doorknob. I grab hold of those and pull the door as tight as I can, using the underwear like a bungee cord to hold the door semi-shut. 

I stand there for who knows how long. It was probably only seconds but it seemed like forever. I am listening like nobody’s business. 

And then the inevitable happens. The closet door is pulled open.

There stands a man with a gun in his hand. 

Other than immediately noticing the gun (a very shiny, silver pistol-like thing), all I really comprehended was that this guy had the bluest eyes I had ever seen. 

After a long pregnant pause, I get the nerve to speak. I’m not sure exactly what I said but it was something along the lines that my dad was on his way home and he would be there any minute. 

Of course, the impact of such a statement would have been much better if my voice hadn’t risen about three octaves while I was talking. The last few words were most likely spoken in not only a very high pitch but also with a distinctively hysterical tone. 

Now, let me remind you, I hadn’t had a real shower in three weeks at this time. And to make matters worse, I was wearing a ratty old t-shirt and some hideous granny panties. Because that’s all that would fit over the cast.

That’s it. 

The only pants I could wear over the cast were my dad’s sweat pants. So I usually just went without. 

To this day, when people hear this story, they tell me how lucky I was.

As an adult, I do realize how bad things could have gone.

At the time though, probably because I was in denial about the true dangerousness of the situation, all I could focus on was that I was in my underwear and unshowered.

Let me tell you, you could have fried chicken on my hair. 

Back to the story. I have made my statement about my dad being home soon.

And he just stares at me. He finally says “Just . . . Just . . . Just be quiet.”

Then he leaves.

Leaves the bedroom. Leaves the house (remember, the noisy stairs). And I assume, leaves my neighborhood. 

TO BE CONTINUED . . .