I still remember soaking off a scab from my elbow, that I got from crashing my bicycle into a fence. When I was little, someone monkeyed with the brakes. But they worked again after that. But, it was better to crash into a fence than to cross into traffic.
Oh, yeah, bike crashes. I had a good one when I was about 10. I jumped my bike on a makeshift ramp we made out of a cement block and two 2x6's laid side by side with one end on the concrete block. The challenge was to see who could jump their bike the farthest. The kid right before me hit the boards wrong and one of them went crooked, so there was a gap right at the block, and I didn't see it until I was on it. Not only did I not get the farthest jump, but I landed in the gravel shoulder of the road, hands first. I still have the scar on my palm from that one. My sister rode me home on the back of her bike and she was wearing a white coat, of all things. We showed up and my sister was covered in blood and Mom went into overdrive thinking SHE was hurt, and she was trying to tell her it was ME, then finally my dad saw my hand. They whisked me to the bathroom and my dad sat on my forearm, with my hand over the sink, while my mom poured iodine or some evil concoction on it, and THEN (no I'm not done!), mom had to get a toothbrush to clean all the little gravel out of the big jagged hole in my palm. I think that's the most pain I've ever been in, in my whole life. No doctor, though. No stitches, just a couple of bandaids and some ace bandage around my hand to hold everything together.
Yup, those were the days!
Can you just IMAGINE a kid today going through something like that? Probably their parents wouldn't let them ride their bikes unsupervised, and a ramp would be out of the question. And helmets and pads required, right? Man, we had never even HEARD of those things back then, and WE LIVED.
Just to hold me until after chores and milking and all the related cleanup, when I can make an actual breakfast.
