One of the corollaries to growing old is spending a lot of time with doctors and taking tests of various kinds to ensure your still healthy. We’ve been doing a lot of that this past month. It’s kept me off posting.
Another thing that happens as we grow older is remembering things (or, sometimes, not remembering things). I decided to write down a few of those from when I was a lot younger.
When I started school, I was already beginning to read. In those days (1940s) reading was the major subject you learned in First Grade. I loved reading. I also read rapidly. In class I was often reading a page or more beyond where the rest of class was. When called on to read aloud I did not know where to start because I was not on the same page with everyone else.
During one class when I was sitting under a window near the bookshelves, a kickball from outside hit the window over my head. The glass shattered and fell all around me. I just kept on reading and did not move. This behavior, of course, had consequences. The teachers decided that the way to keep me from being bored silly was to put me in a class with other children who also were already reading. They skipped me out of the rest of First Grade and dumped me into a Second Grade class. As far as reading was concerned, that was almost a solution. But it had other effects, too.
I was the youngest in my new class, and also one of the smallest. My muscular coordination wasn’t that good. Fine motor coordination is almost always slower to develop in boys than in girls. Nobody thought of it as a problem. The next year, when we began to learn team sports, I was always the last person chosen to be on any team. I also had a genetic problem. My spine has a slight inverse curvature. My entire life I was never able to bend forward and touch my toes. I always came up an inch or so too high. In terms of social adjustment being skipped forward was a less than ideal action.
Even as late as Seventh Grade, when the class had free play outside, I would participate in games of tag, It was easy to catch me, and I could rarely tag someone else.
I was also very self conscious about the two big radiation scars on my back. The smaller scars on my ear lobe and next to my nose weren’t really noticeable. But the one’s on my back were. I often used the excuse that my skin was sensitive and susceptible to sunburn in order to keep my undershirt on when swimming. It was really to keep those scars hidden.
Eventually, I overcame the problems. I married, had 4 children and 14 grandchildren, and last month I became a great-grandfather. A recent search on Google for my name came up with over 1000 entries, not counting Facebook. So being a possible subject of some negative discrimination doesn’t seem to have been that big a deal. Overcoming a little adversity is probably good for you.
Wetherhorn 