An Introduction

I’ve broken my right arm four times. The first time was in preschool, on the playground waiting for my mom to come get me after work. I had a lot of unfounded confidence on the monkey bars. That day, my butterfingers got the best of me and I landed funny. To a preschooler, this fall might as well have been like falling off a building. The teachers took me to the side, assessed my damage, and thankfully my mom wasn’t too far to whisk me off to some New York City hospital.

The second time I broke my arm was a repeat of the first. Clearly I hadn’t learned that my slippery fingers didn’t have the grip strength to keep me from tumbling off my preschool’s monkey bars yet again. It was only a year after the first break, just the other bone this time. I distinctly remember sitting in the classroom after lunch-time recess, holding my arm and holding back tears, waiting for my mom to whisk me off to that same New York City hospital. 

The third time was my worst break. It was after school, my dad was home from work that day and took me to the playground to run off some energy. As a kid, I hated sitting still. I was enrolled in every sport you could think of just so my parents could have a break from me romping around a rather small Upper West Side apartment. Unfortunately my dad did not account for an overcrowding of fellow first-graders at this playground. As I was coming down a slide, a classmate - who I will keep anonymous, but you know who you are - was coming up the slide. I said, “I’m about to slide down, watch out.” And he didn’t care. He shoved me off the top of the slide, and somehow, this fall felt even further than the preschool monkey bars. 

Both bones in my arm were broken. The outside bone (I had to Google, but my ulna) was just shy of poking out of my skin. My dad, famously terrible under pressure, called my mom. “Susan, what do I do?” I remember hearing her say through his 2004-era flip phone, “Take her to the hospital, you idiot.” And yet again, whisked off to the hospital. The bones were reset while I was put under, I woke up begging for a slice of pizza, and I got to have the entire first grade sign my hot pink cast. Except the guy who pushed me off. To this day, I refuse his Instagram follow requests.

The fourth time was not as interesting. I was playing basketball in fourth grade and got shoved into the wall. I had recognized the pain of a bone breaking by this point in my 9 years of life and took myself out of the game. Mom came to pick me up and gave me two options: we could either sit in a New York City hospital on a Friday night, where we knew we would be sitting for hours until my limp right arm was a priority for staff, or she could take me home, keep me comfortable, and take me in the morning. I opted for sitting on the couch with our dog, chock full of Tylenol and Lipton soup, and got wrapped up in the morning where we only had to wait for an hour. 

There is a lot to a person that is under the surface. When I’m on the train and someone is sitting across from me, I tend to paint their potential life in my head. I wonder if they have experienced similar milestones. Have they broken a bone before too? Have they fallen in love? Have they lost someone they care about?

This blog is a virtual diary of sorts, but with the potential of an audience. I feel I have experienced quite a bit in 27 years, from the loss of parents to running marathons to breaking bones. I hope I can provide some advice, but at the very least, some entertainment.