Thirteen marked a big turning point in my life. As much as I was connected to my body, I was reckless in pursuit of exhilaration and pushing the boundaries of my physical self. I fearlessly threw myself into every activity and it was only after a major consequence that I realized my body shouldn't always be left to its own devices.
There had been a few mishaps prior to this time, but I was lucky to come away relatively unscathed. I was riding my bike on one occasion daydreaming, breathing in the cool air and the newly cut grass, when bam... I ran head-on into a telephone pole. As I flew over the handlebars, no helmet by the way, I must have had the reflex to lean to the left as I was airborne. Instead of smashing my head into the pole, I landed on the pavement. Somewhat embarrassing, but I got my scraped-up body off the ground and mustered the composure to ride away.
Another time, I was running across our lawn into the neighbor's yard to catch a ball, looking behind me rather than where I was going, when Mr. Varo's German Shepherd crossed my path just in time for me to flip over him and land on my head right on their concrete walkway. I was knocked unconscious and woke up some time later in my bed with no recollection of what had happened. But as soon as my head stopped hurting, I was back outside looking for the next adventure.
I had a scar under my lower lip where my teeth had penetrated after I fell down a flight of stairs when I was two. I always had scrapes and bruises all over my legs and arms, so much so that my mom stopped putting band-aids on them. Instead she washed them with soap and water, squirted enough Bactine to sting like crazy and sent me on my way. I remember wondering if my knees would always look this way, scarred and discolored, even when I was a grown-up. But I was oblivious to any pain once I started moving my body again and I was anything but vain at that point in my life.
But then I became a teenager. I was more aware of myself in relation to the larger world and, whereas I felt no attraction to boys, I was drawn to some things that boys liked to do. Like running track. I especially liked to run fast and beat boys, so I became a sprinter in Middle School and particularly liked the 100m. There weren't girls' athletic teams in the early 60's, so I raced with the boys team because I was pretty fast. And that's when I began to earn their respect and learn other things from them, like skateboarding.
1960 saw the first manufactured skateboards, pretty primitive narrow wooden boards with ball-bearing metal wheels. And by 1963, skateboarding was at the height of its popularity. I had tried my friends' boards and knew immediately it was right for me. Even though I still loved riding my bike, this mode of transport was way cooler among the other 8th graders, especially the boys. I had saved up my weekly lawn-mowing money and bought my first, very own Roller Derby Skateboard for $10.
That year, skateboarding was pretty much all I did after school and on weekends. Tricks weren't popular yet, so it was all about speed and maneuvering. My favorite route from my house on Royal Crest Drive (Brookfield, Wisconsin) was to skate down to Beaufort and turn right onto Lisa Lane, a winding rural road with sections of good downward slope. There were intermittent flats too, so after getting up some pretty good speed, you could traverse and slow down gradually without having to go off into the grass. I got really good at skating the long stretch from the top of Lisa Lane to Imperial Drive without ever stopping.
Lisa Lane became the place to be, especially after a new blacktop surface was laid. My friends and I rode it over and over again, skateboarding to the bottom and walking back up to the top to do it again. Mostly the neighbors didn't mind, except one man whose house was just around the first big curve who used to yell at us as we went by. We figured the streets were public property, so he couldn't really do anything about it. We never said anything to him, just passed his house as quickly as we could whenever we saw him.
Then one Saturday we were back at our favorite course. First run, I took the lead and started out as usual. As I rounded the initial curve at maximum speed, all of a sudden I saw new gravel all the way across the road extending out from the driveway of the man who didn't like us. No time to stop and no path to go around, my board hit the gravel stopping dead and I flew forward landing directly on my left leg.
I was fine until I noticed that my foot was facing backwards. Then shock set in and my friend ran to the closest house to call my parents. I don't ever remember being in so much pain as they drove me to the hospital. The x-rays showed I had a twisting break in my lower leg including the growth plate of the tibia and would need an orthopedic specialist to set it to make sure it continued to grow without leaving a deformity, a misalignment or one leg shorter than the other.
It seemed like forever until they gave me something for the pain and even then, setting the leg so that my foot and knee were again facing in the same direction, was excruciating. They gave me a plaster cast from over my foot to the top of my leg and told me it would take three months until I could have a half cast on my lower leg for another six weeks, if all went smoothly. I would have to be on crutches the entire time.
For the first time, my body that had defined me, was rendered out of commission. It was just the start of the Summer and there was no worse news I could have gotten. I had to dig deep to make my peace with my fate for the next four and a half months. Never mind no skateboarding. No nothing, no physical activity at all.
But that's when I discovered reading and surrendered to the myriad adventures of the imagination I found in books. Everyday my mom dropped me at the library and I journeyed inward on "To Kill a Mockingbird", "Siddhartha", "Catcher in the Rye". I could embody the words on the page so that I felt like I had almost lived the exploits myself. Reading took me on a magic carpet ride to times and places I never dreamed existed. And it saved me and forever changed the way I moved in the world.
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