Briefly, as it's getting late, here is something that was brought to my mind tonight when my mother and I were talking tonight about the time that I fell down the stairwell. I don't think I've told you the story of the stairwell and the radiator before, have I? There are a few things you need to put this in context:
- I was six or thereabouts.
- I fell down from almost the third floor to the first.
- I hit my head on the radiator, the bottom pipe that curved into the floor.
- I broke it. Broke the radiator. With my head.
- And, incidentally, when we were little, my brother and I weren't allowed to have sweet cereals: nothing with sugar as one of the first three ingredients, except once a year on our birthdays.
So, after I was hauled off to the hospital and they were sure I'd live (only a concussion, from breaking a radiator with my head, it's a miracle), my mother made a list of all the sweet cereals I could name, and when I got home from the hospital (after a week, if memory serves, which it may not), they were all there waiting for me. A long line of boxes on top of the fridge.
It's obviously my mother's writing for the most part, though I amended the first one. I didn't know how to spell "berries," but after all my mother didn't know how to spell "Chocula," so there we are. (That paper I have about loving hockey and the Bruins, that would be about the same era, I suppose, the one where I spelled Buyck right but "Jhon" wrong.)
Funny the things that make the biggest memories, isn't it?
You broke the cast iron radiator with your head. OK.
ReplyDeleteSome people had much more adventurous childhoods than I.