The Uneaten Cookie

I don’t exactly recall the actual breaking of my arm, but I do remember riding my tricycle. The memory of it even seems a little yellowed, like photographs aged with the passing of time. I remember the cracks in the cement, the brilliance of the afternoon rays. I remember peskily following my brother around from apartment to apartment. I remember the handlebars of my tricycle, with plastic strips that hung from the ends.

It’s funny the images and feelings I do recall before I even had the benefit of words to obscure them. Simple. Unpretentious. Innocent. Unconcerned for the cares of life.

I faintly remember the tricycle lying on top of me, although I don’t remember how I freed myself from its hold.

The pain of my arm must have been a trauma that shock chose to erase from my mind. I couldn’t have been much older than two because I was unable to voice what had happened to my baffled parents. My mom said she was clued into the fact that something was wrong when a cookie wouldn’t stop my crying. I held the uneaten cookie in the hand of the injured appendage and feebly propped that arm with the good one. But it was the fact that I refused to eat the cookie that alerted her to the fact that something was definitely wrong.

The injury slowed me down a little, until I found new use for the cast that replaced it. It made a practical mechanism for boosting my swing into bed each night as well as an impressive thwart against my irksome older brother.

I’ve somehow often found practical uses for the curses in my life.