How Did We Ever Survive?

    One of the doctors I work for and I were just reminiscing about our childhoods.  I do wonder how we ever lived past the age of five.  I am certain, quite certain, that it is only by the grace of God that many of us lived, but doubly certain that I, in particular, survived my childhood only by His grace, because He had plans for me.  I don't mean to sound grandiose.  I mean, He has plans for us all, right?

Photo from JalopyJournal.com

     Now, in general, your and my preschool years were fraught with danger.  We lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and sometimes even without jelly.  Where were all the peanut allergies then?  The Planters Peanut guy was our friend.  Car seats for kids were these little chairs you hung over the back of the front seat and may have had a little plastic strap to put around the kid's lap.  Seems to me it about elevated us just in line to be a trajectory through the windshield.  Not cool.  It definitely had a nifty little steering wheel, though, so your child could pretend to drive!  (I still pretend to drive.)  Cars were built like tanks.  They didn't dent easily, so you could fly around inside the car during an accident, the energy of the crash being transferred to you instead of the car's indestructible body.  Cool! 


     Our '56 green and white Chevy station wagon was a great car, and it drove forever, and took my family back and forth from Pennsylvania to Tucson, AZ., in or about 1961.  That, and it was still going strong until the end of that decade.  Of course, it had no seat belts.  What were they, after all, in 1956?  I used to stand on the front seat while Dad was driving, and if he had to brake suddenly, his magical right arm would come across and save me from going forward into the solid steel dash or through the windshield.  I've talked to many people who have been  saved by their parents' magical right arm in that very same way.  When seat belts did come out, they were rather uncomfortable lap belts, and they were usually pushed down in the seat, out of our way.  They may have saved some lives, but they also were the cause of bladder trauma (if yours was full and you had an accident -- auto accident, I mean.  The other kind of "accident" also came if your bladder was full, but was a little different.) Also you could get a specific kind of vertebral fracture attributed to lap belts.  Enter the shoulder harness, cutting annoyingly into the side of your neck.  Do I have some kind of abnormal neck that my seat belt is always in my carotid artery? This worries me.

     But make no mistake, my years working in a hospital has convinced me I would not get into a car without using a seat belt, neck annoyance or not.  I DO value my life THAT much, for goodness' sake!

     When I was about to enter first grade, our family drove across country to Tucson, AZ. to live.  My mother's parents lived there, to take advantage of the more salubrious climate.  My poor parents, driving cross country with a 4 year old, a 6 year old and a 10 year old.  

     Speaking of safety, to lessen fights in the back seat over who had to sit on the "hump" in the middle, Dad, (a gifted carpenter), built a little sofa out of wood, padded it, covered it in green vinyl to match the car, and it fit the entire width of the cargo space in the far back of the station wagon, the back of it resting against the back seat and facing the rear.  Of course, it wasn't attached to anything, so often you had to brace your feet going up hill, or for sharp turns, as you would slide around a bit.  But it was great for my sister and I, who had legs short enough to use it.  No A/C, but the open tailgate window made a beautiful breeze.  It did become a matter of the near-death-experience the early morning we left a motel where we'd spent the night, and my sister was getting some sleep on the little sofa.  My father, unfortunately, had forgotten to close the tailgate of the vehicle.  There was my 4 year old sister, on an unattached little sofa, as we drove down the highway, tailgate wide open.  It wasn't until we stopped for breakfast -- those little boxes of cereal you could cut open and use as a bowl -- at a roadside picnic table, that Dad discovered his blunder.  When questioned why she hadn't said anything, my sister was surprised.  Doesn't Daddy know best?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------  

Me, at the time of this story, actually sitting on the little sofa. Don't mind my pout, we had been swimming all day in the mountains outside of Tucson and I'd just woken up!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

      Of course, we didn't need our parents' help to kill ourselves.  We were pretty gifted at doing the job also, and had many near misses all on our own.  We swam in unfamiliar swimming holes, built rafts out of old doors and inner tubes, hiked woods, and miles of railroad tracks, running across the bridges if a train came.  Fished off those RR bridges, too.  We tested the thickness of ice on skating ponds by skating on them and tied ropes on trees and swung out over swimming holes, dropping into massive depths of 3 feet or less.   My brother broke his arm sledding on a 45 degree hill liberally dotted with trees and rocks that ended in a 6 foot drop off into a creek.   He also tested the efficacy of my winter coat by shooting me point blank in the stomach with a BB gun.  Ouch.


     The worst thing we ever did we never told my parents until we had left home and were married adults.  One summer afternoon we walked up the railroad tracks to an old abandoned quarry.   On a whim we began to climb, my brother, who was probably about 14, I was 10, and my sister, 8.  We got about 6 feet from the top, about 25 or 30 feet off the ground, when we got stuck.  Couldn't go up, couldn't go back down.  I think it was raw fear of a beating, or just knowing the shame of getting in such a predicament when he was supposed to be the older, smart, and responsible one, that gave my brother the super-human strength to pull himself up the last 6 feet, pulling on thin roots, finding non-existent handholds and toeholds.  He got to the top, turned around, grabbed my arm and pulled me up, then my sister.  We lay on the top of that quarry, chests heaving, sweating, hearts pounding in our ears.  When we could talk, my brother said, "STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!!" and made us promise to never tell anyone about our foolishness.  And we never did until more than 20 years later.  We never even talked about it among ourselves.

     Like I said, it is only by God's grace that we survived.  And I didn't even MENTION the time that...