CWSS#6

CWSS#6

“Ole bull!” It was a Tuesday in early June. The sun tucked behind Signal Hill led a rosy grey sky. Brother and me took to playing Matador.

Matador rules. One would grab his bike. He became the Bull. The other player grabbed a towel substitute for the cape.

Brother took a full turn as bull. He ducked and wove. Like now, he then proved a capable bull.

Then the turn came to me. The new bull took off on his new bike, in his new pants and with something to prove.

I took a couple of passes and the brother Matador waved the terry-fied cape. Great fun. But it was time to dial it up. The bull (me) took off up to the end of the block at Yawkey at Drake about two hundred metres to the north.

Turning at that point the bull cranked hard, on pumping legs. The new bike was capable of a top speed of more than thirty miles per hour and that was the goal. The Sturmey-Archer clicked into the top gear. The bull closed in a hurry on the Matador’s cape.

One foot before the front tire of the bull hit the cape, Matador dropped the cape. The cape caught in the tire, wrapped into the fender stopping the front wheel then and there. Unfortunately, the laws of motion meant that the brainy part of the stupid bull went flying into the air into the swan dive.

In the supplied graphic I have tried to replicate the stunned stupid look by the diver as he rocketed into the pavement.

I managed to have my hands and arms out. And as a result with all the gymnastic twisting, I managed to protect my head but my left shoulder took the heavy impact. The Matador laughed while running to get mother and first aid.

Aftermath

Couldn’t make the Pony league team since it meant I missed the whole summer. My future in baseball dissipated. Yet, baseball then did not have the same Canadian development system that it does now.

I never was mad at brother for this. If I saw a ton of monkey meat bearing down as fast as a car, I would have dropped the cape too.

According to the doctor I suffered a cracked scaphoid bone in my left wrist which needed a cast for six weeks.

I also seemed to be stiff which changed my delivery in curling. Flexibility seemed to be deserting me.
Final notes

Pictured. Recreation of emotive expression as I flew through the air to a crash landing.

This concludes the series on how I might have suffered that serious back injury. These incidents provided the likeliest times when I may have suffered those compressed fractures in my back. You can understand my difficulty when someone asks, "How did you break the bones in my upper back?"

I don't know? You pick.