me Tarzan, you fell

So, says the storyteller, sitting in a chair by the fireside, a gin and tonic in his hand, did I ever tell you about the time I broke my arm? It was 1998. I was eleven years old, and a reluctant Boy Scout. My troop and I were camped just off the road running past Norris Dam, on the Clinch River in eastern Tennessee. It was just an inch away from car camping, really. The vehicles were parked a few hundred yards from the tents. This would prove to be fortunate. My memories of being a Boy Scout are not fond ones. I wasn't in the best of troops. I was a pretty wimpy kid, and the other guys were far from supportive or brotherly. I'd been on several outings with them already, and none were the kind I'd remember wistfully. But during this trip, I thought things were really going to turn around. The weather was beautiful (unlike Big Hump, which was negative temperatures coupled with 30 mile-an-hour winds; it was snowing sideways). Dad and my brother Harlan were along, meaning yours truly, Mommy's boy, wouldn't be left all alone (unlike Savage Gulf, where I was crying and moping and smelly all week because I'd forgotten to pack soap). Camp Jim was a marvelous place, too. It was a big, wide clearing in the woods, floored with dry brown soil, packed hard. It sloped gently upward to meet the wooded flank of a ridge. The trees surrounding and dotting the clearing seemed impossibly tall to me back then. The sunlight trickled down through the canopy and dappled the forest floor with those dancing bits of sunlight which I found (and still do find) so dazzlingly wonderful. All in all, it was a picturesque spot. But most importantly, it seemed the other guys in the troop were beginning to warm up to me. Near the center of the clearing was a particularly gigantic tree. I'm afraid I can't remember its exact dimensions. And I was so short back then that it must've been a lot smaller than it seemed. In my memory, it was gigantic, the next thing to the California redwoods. It was a towering oak, gray-barked and rough, no branches less than 30 above the ground, the trunk so wide that six of us would've had to link arms to encircle it. An enormous tree in the camp would've been awesome enough for us. But no, this one just happened to have thick brown vines hanging from it. And what's more, one of them was swingable. I was wandering around camp one golden afternoon not long after we'd arrived, a bit bored and a bit tired. (Two owls had chosen the wee hours of the morning to start having a conversation, and one of them happened to be perched in the tree right above our tent. And these owls didn't hoot, either. They screamed. Nobody in the camp got much sleep that night.) I look over and I see the guys swinging on this vine. And I think, cool. Here's the setup: the massive tree is just at the foot of the slope of the ridge. In front of it, the ground slopes gently down for a few yards, then suddenly drops fast—a steep embankment, the wall of a shallow gully running through the camp from north to south. This makes the vine-swing that much more thrilling. The guys, grabbing the vine and pushing off the trunk of the tree, swing out over the gentle slope, and then over the embankment. At the farthest outward point in their swing, they are about 15 feet above the ground or so. I make up my mind to try that swing or die in the attempt. The guys make room in the line for me, something I wasn't expecting. Surprised and gratified, I take my place and wait eagerly for my turn. I watch my predecessors take theirs, trying to pick up tips. Push off from the tree as hard as you can. Grasp the vine and climb up the side of the trunk a little to give yourself some extra height and oomph. Push to the side, making your swing wider, longer, more circular and less ovoid. I'm not the only one watching the proceedings. One of the older boys—I think his name was Lee or something—is also perusing, standing on the gentle slope below the tree. The guys are swinging directly over his head. Lee's extremely tall—must be nearing six feet. He's also quite thin and gangly, like most boys his age. My turn comes. My heart in my mouth, I grab hold of the vine, bend my knees as far as they'll go, and push with all my might. It's wonderful. I go swinging out, clutching the rough bark of the vine for all I'm worth, the sudden breeze blowing back my hair, the sunlight sparkling through the leaves high above, the ground dropping suddenly away until it seems I'm as high as a bird, I can see the whole camp and practically everybody in it, I can even see through the trees and over the hill to the road and the Clinch River beyond—and then suddenly I'm swinging back, and I pivot and kick out my legs to stop myself smashing into the other side of the tree. Breathless, I hand the vine to the next lucky bugger, and get in line again. No way one swing is enough. It seems to take ages, but eventually I'm back at the front of the line again. I grasp the vine (I'm probably grinning like a punch-drunk monkey), climb even higher up the trunk, and push off even harder. I start my outward swing— And suddenly it feels like someone clamped a ball-and-chain around my ankles. I can barely hold on. My grip is slipping, the rough bark of the vine skinning my hands. I glance down. Lee, the older boy, is hanging onto my shoes. He's swinging along with me. I look up. We're over the embankment. My head empties. My only thought now is to hold on. The ride is forgotten, except inasmuch as I really, really want to get off now. I try to hold on. If I lose it now, we're falling a long way. But I can't do it. Lee is just too heavy. Just as we reach the peak of the swing and begin to head back, I lose my grip. Those few split-seconds that I fall 15 feet and land on the slope of the embankment are a terrifying, toxic blur. WHAM. Lee rolls away, unhurt. I land on my hands and knees on the steepest part of the embankment, facing uphill. I know I'm hurt. But I've never broken a bone before, and I don't know the signs. My arm doesn't hurt yet, but there's that numb sort of feeling which precedes pain. It's in both of my arms and both my knees. How I managed to avoid planting my face in the dirt, I'll never know. Maybe it was the slope that saved me, who knows. But it does a number on my right wrist. Even after I've been picked up, dusted off and set to rights, it keeps throbbing. And in a few minutes, it starts to hurt. It starts to hurt like hell. Even sitting perfectly still, it hurts as though it's going to fall off. And if I try to move it, or even touch it, however slightly, fresh waves of raw agony shoot through my whole arm. Dad doesn't believe I've done anything serious to myself. He observes me on the floor of our tent, cradling my arm to my chest, whimpering, tears in my eyes, and says "Oh, come on. You're all right." Later, I felt rather sorry for him. Mom really tore him a new one for not believing I was hurt. In Dad's defense, I didn't fall that far, nor land that hard. It was inconceivable that I should've broken something. Pop probably just thought I was scraped up a little, and was trying to get me to toughen up. I'm glad he tried, at least. Dad and the troop leaders try various things on my arm: wrapping it in bandages; ice packs; warm water; immobilization. Nothing works. Eventually, the call is made. I'll have to be taken to the hospital. Dad calls up Mom and she comes A.S.A.P, driving our huge Ford B-Wagon van. That thing was amazingly capacious. With two seats up front and two benches in back, plus a vast amount of cargo space, it was the Post family's workhorse for nearly ten years. It chauffeured a family of four (and two dogs) on numerous picnics, transported entire soccer teams, supplied car campers with a week's rations, and was the best thing for a relaxing after-lunch nap while driving home from the restaurant. My memory blanks out here. I don't remember the ride from camp to the hospital at all. Such is my curse. I have an awful memory, and it's photographic to boot. This means that conversations, sounds, sights, and sensations are often utterly lost, and all I'm left with are images. I'm fortunate to remember as much of this incident as I have. I don't remember what explanation Lee gave for leaping up and grabbing my feet. I don't remember how the other guys reacted to our fall. I don't remember much of anything apart from what I've told you here, unfortunately. My apologies. The X-rays come back and the tall, dark-haired doctor puts it up for us to see. I have a spidery crack halfway through my radius. Nothing that needs to be set or splinted, fortunately, but enough to technically qualify as a "break." It also qualifies for a cast. Now that I've had some anesthetics put into my system and can actually move my arm without wanting to scream, I'm rather pleased. That's the way I recall feeling, anyway. I got to go home early from the Boy Scout trip and had a broken bone into the bargain. I didn't want to break a bone, mind you, but I felt it was something I needed to do at some point in my life. And have a cast. Then I could hold my eleven-year-old head up and proclaim, "I am a man of the world. I have broken a bone, and worn a cast. In your face, Herman." I don't know who Herman is. He just stands for all those bullies at recess who called me a girl or a wuss or a homo. For some unexplained reason, I picked the color orange for my cast. I don't know why. It didn't have anything to do with football. The colors of the University of Tennessee (with whom Peyton Manning was playing at the time) were orange and white, and all of Knoxville lit up with those colors every game day. But I was too young (or too wussy) to like football yet. I just liked the color orange. So they put it on. It went from my wrist up to my elbow, extending between my thumb and index finger. This made it impossible to hold a fork or a pencil, but I grinned and bore it for six long weeks. And I got all my classmates at middle school to sign it. I felt good and proud and accomplished for the first time in my life. I look back on the whole affair now with mingled amusement and shame. I'm ashamed that I couldn't have been stronger and held on to the vine as long as it took to return to the tree safely, even if I skinned my hands raw. That would've been the brave, selfless, manly thing to have done. Maybe that's what Lee was trying to teach me, I don't know. I'm just glad he didn't get hurt. I'm ashamed that I spent the rest of the afternoon moaning and groaning and writhing in the tent. That wasn't very manly, either. I'm amused at how the whole thing must've looked, though. Tiny Little Me, swinging on a vine. Tall Skinny Guy grabs my shoes. Suddenly TLM is swinging from the vine, and TSG is swinging from me. That must've been a sight. Then suddenly TLM lets go and the whole shebang plunges to earth. TLM spends the rest of the afternoon crying and whining on the floor of the tent. There was a lesson to be learned here, but it's temporarily escaped the author's mind. AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the first of the fireside chats that I mentioned earlier. Well, not really the first. I've already told a few stories on this blog. There's the one about how I fell into a pond in fall in Ohio when I was a kid; another concerning a certain all-night party in Korea that nearly resulted in a lost watch; and a third—oh yeah, did you know that I once saved a rabbit's life? Ever wonder what living in a Buddhist temple is like? Check 'em out. There's much more to come. P.S. I've decided to postpone that award-ceremony thingy until tomorrow, and combine it with the news report I've been compiling. I've got some rather juicy tidbits for you. We have a new dog, for starters. The garbage truck got stuck in the sand up the road a couple days ago, too. HALLELUJAH, I passed the big scary test on shots yesterday! This morning I had my first flight lesson in a month and a half; I went "under the hood" for the second time. Dad has tapped me to play bartender for the dinner party he's hosting tonight. And did I mention how nice the weather's been down here lately?