2-B The Hat I Didn’t Want to Lose (Cont.), & One of My Mom’s Poems. Song: “Summer Breeze”.
(The photo above is from much later, and I was very glad to still be wearing “The hat I didn’t want to lose”.) STORY CONTINUED…
I had daringly crawled toward my hat underneath an abandoned one axle flatbed trailer left in a side yard field in my previous neighborhood. My brother and I had been standing nearby watching kids playing their game of running up to the high side of the trailer over, and over again. After someone swiped my hat off, my brother had disappeared. I soon saw it lying underneath that trailer, so I went around one of two tires which were half-buried in the mud, by crouching down, and crawling duck-walk- style to see if I could reach my hat.
I scurried quickly out of the way each time it came crashing down over and over again, unable to reach it in time, with every attempt. I knew that I’d have to get closer to it, and get back much faster than each of my last attempts, and each time I quickly duck- crawled back to the middle, underneath, again, it was just after I heard another loud…”THUD”, followed by the pounding drum like sounds of footsteps above, made by frantically excited bigger children, as they eagerly started their wild reckless climb toward the trailer’s high side, over and over again. In mere seconds, the trailer plank came crashing down each time on its ends. I knew that there was absolutely no way that I could retrieve my hat by reaching for it from underneath, so instead, and as carefully as any three year old could, I exited from underneath. I walked around to one of the trailer ends where I could try reaching my hat from the outside, in.
As I stood and watched, the trailer plank, like an elevator, rose above me, and passed over my head. My three year old little body rushed in from that end, going underneath, lightning fast, and attempted another hat retrieval. However, I was only able to get to where it was without picking it up, and just as the wooden planked trailer floor started its descent again, I scurried out from under just in time before another “THUD”.
And, another “THUD”… I didn’t get squished. The excitement and roller-coaster-type wild screaming continued going on. So did the “thuds”. I frantically tried to get their attention, but no one standing on that trailer had even noticed me walking around. They definitely weren’t going to stop long enough for me to retrieve my hat. In fact, no one paid any attention to me at all. Maybe the only way to get their attention was to climb aboard and join them, getting on the end of it quickly, all within the seconds that it stayed sitting on the ground. But, when I tried to do so, i remember that the trailer floor was so thick that it was too high from the ground for my little body to step up onto it. I would have had to SIT on the end, and THEN stand up, but BEFORE everyone turned around to run up to the high side, or else I would be catapulted into the air if I wasn’t fast enough to get up with them in time to run with them to the high side! And, the ends of the open trailer’s floor were sharp, because they were lined with black polished icy cold steel, and I could slip while trying to get on, especially as it started moving upward again. What’s more, if I did manage to get on, I most likely would not have been able to mingle in with those kids fast enough, anyway. I wonder, now, where my big brother was during all of this? If I succeeded in catching up to the group on that trailer plank, the idea of a three year old asking a group of 6 to 8 year olds, “Would you all mind stopping so I can get my hat from underneath the trailer so I won’t be squished?”… well, that definitely was just out of the question, and this scenario could have resulted in me being catapulted and injured, anyway.
I had no other alternative, other than to keep trying from the end going underneath, so I raced under it from the outside, in, again. This time, when I reached for my hat, I got a hold of my hat, and I raced out with it, backwards, with the hat in my hand trailing behind me. I survived, and I made it out alive, and all in one piece… well almost…. minus the end of my ring finger. I looked, and my finger appeared just like a little piece of a squished scrambled egg sandwich, and the end of it was just dangling by a piece of skin. Screaming bloody murder, I squeezed it in my hat, and ran home.
When I reached my house, my mom made me open my blood soaked hat. When she saw that the end of my finger was just hanging on by a thin slice of skin, she appeared in deeper shock than me! She wrapped my finger in a white washcloth, and It was completely soaked in blood by the time we reached the hospital where they sewed the end of my finger back on. Eventually, my scars healed, and the fingernail looked almost normal, except when you look closely, you can see where the scar tissue is just under the nail, and makes my ring-finger fingernail grow in more rounded, like the shape of a scoop, which actually makes picking up little things from a flat surface really easy. And, because it’s always sharp, I also discovered that my nail catches the seam of a baseball, which enabled me to throw some crazy curving, or sliding, fast-balls, which greatly improved my pitching skill all through my baseball age years.
Who would have imagined that this injury would end up helping me become a game winning pitcher? I luckily played four years instead of the usual three (since my dad was the manager, he let me play a year earlier by, but only by, practicing with the team during my whole first little league year). Our team even won the ten team league series four years in a row! Although our father, incredibly, never remembered a thing before age 10 (ten), he made great efforts toward giving his three kids a good childhood.
Another one of my mom’s poems (below)…
ON “ENGERNY”
Once upon a time
A beautiful child of mineProclaimed to me that
Mom! I have such ENGERNY!
Mom, I simply can't sit still
Mom, the balls, the bats, the kids, and that.
Mom, you know, Mom--I’m terribly confused – can’t find a way to
Do my things and still please you and Dad --The ENGERNY I have – the gifts, the talents
And the wishes --Mom, please help me!