Don’t put anything past bone-breaking younger siblings

As a young boy of 3 or so, I broke my left wrist. According to my mother, I was climbing on the back of the couch and fell off. According to me, my younger sister, a newborn at the time, pushed me off. I’ll continue to use my version, despite its unlikeliness, as it comforts me to think my sister was messing with my life right from the get-go of hers.

I’ve managed to avoid my sister’s bone-breaking ways for the past 35 years, despite some of her best efforts during childhood. My fortune may have come to an end earlier this week, because while watering plants around my home, I tripped over the base to my son’s basketball hoop as I walked backwards to straighten out a garden house. To break the fall, I used my left wrist and in turn may have fractured a bone near my thumb.

I’m using the word “may” because the fracture that could be there can’t be detected by x-rays immediately. I’ll have to wait another week to find out if it’s broken. I was told, “If it still hurts, it’s broke.”

My wife’s cousin, an athletic trainer, put it in better terms:

“That lovely bone that takes a week to show up on x-rays happens to be the scaphoid bone. Which is located in the snuffbox, which is found on the radial dorsal aspect of hand. This fracture is usually the result of falling on an outstretched hand, or as we athletic trainers love to call it the FOOSH! Very common injury in such sports as: basketball, baseball, football and softball. Or in Scott’s case, tripping over basketball hoop and bracing the fall with an outstretched hand. Which one usually learns soon after bracing a fall with hands is not a good idea in most cases.”

I didn’t mean to trip over the basketball hoop. In fact, I may argue my sister moved it on me. She secretly came to my house from Ripon, moved it a few feet away from its normal location, and then patiently waited for me to walk backwards at that location.

And as I tripped, she knew my reflexes would cause me to use my left hand to break my fall, and then she could finish what she started nearly 35 years ago: damnation to my left wrist/hand/thumb.

Anyone with younger siblings probably understands this. They were put on this earth to mess with our lives.

My son, the owner of the basketball hoop my sister secretly moved on me, will soon understand this, too. His baby brother, born almost two weeks ago, hasn’t done anything to ruin his life, yet. But I’m guessing the baby will be blamed for something pretty quickly.

When that happens, I’ll have to tell him about my sister’s evil ways, just as his mother will tell him about her younger sisters’ malicious attempts to ruin her life. We older siblings all have to stick together.

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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, July 27, 2012.