Broken Arm, Metal Dave, and My Summer of 21
One summer day, when I was 21, I shattered my elbow in three places. How? I will tell you!
My elbow had swollen to the size of a grapefruit, so I called my father to take me to the hospital. He was not happy as he had already taken his sleep medication for the evening. It was 4 pm. Having no insurance in Little Rock, AR, I went to a free care hospital. The care wasn’t actually free; they just couldn’t refuse anyone service. They would still send you a bill. I sat in the waiting room on a Friday evening in the unofficial meth capital of the world. It was packed with more people looking for feel-good-drugs than the club I would attend later that night. Every time a nurse walked by, a dramatic chorus of moans and groans would start up like some sort of Gay Mens’ Opioid Choir. It was pain, but with jazz hands.
I was scared. I lived alone and had just lost my job at the Gap after calling in on my 21st birthday. If my arm was broken, how would I work, put on clothes, get a 75 cent Pabst Blue Ribbon up to my supple lips?
After waiting late into the night, they brought me into another room packed as full as the waiting room, except now we had cots like in a high school gym after a tornado.
With my good arm, I waved to the friends I had met in the waiting room “Hey Sheryl! Did you get anything good?”
“Not yet, baby”.
The attending physician came up to me, and she looked exhausted. On her face, I could see the countless nights she spent removing objects from places they should not be. The bags under her eyes were the size of bags of meth her usual patients had injected into their toes that evening. A half-eaten nutrigrain bar in the wrapper sat next to her pens.
She quickly looked at my arm and made me extend and move my fingers. She did not think it was broken but just sprained. She sent me for X-rays. I’m sure the X-ray machine had been donated from a 1970s rural animal clinic that was shut down for horrific experiments.
After another hour or so, the doctor came back. With a look of defeat, she said under her breath, “Well, it’s broken in three places.” It was like we had been in a heated game of Battleship, and with my X-ray, her destroyer went plunging into the ocean. My victory prize was a Percocet prescription. She set my arm with a cast that wrapped around my thumb and hand and went almost to my shoulder.
That summer, my friends and I delved into late nights at bars with punk rock bands, after-parties, and 75 cent PBRs. My cast was the ultimate conversation starter, and the key to getting in good with the cool punk rock kids. My friends caught on to this quick and began using the broken arm as a tool. I was presented with another challenge (besides writing, eating, and using the bathroom). My friend Kitty challenged me to tell a different story every time someone asked me how I broke my arm. No matter what. If the same person asked me twice- new story. If I told a group of people and someone new walked up- new story. It became the most extreme improv game I had ever done.
Running from a masked man in the subway. I do close up magic you see, and one night with the saw blah blah blah- hospital. I fell into the gorilla cage at the zoo and they dragged me around like I was their baby. I was working at the Gap and one night a mannequin came to life and we decided to switch arms. I saved a baby by grabbing its runaway stroller. I was playing the hand slap game “Miss Suzie had a steamboat” to the extreme. A very sad sex accident. Well, it was shark week three weeks ago. I passed out in the ball pit at Showbiz Pizza and a family jumped in. I bounced off the slide jumping from that plane that landed in the river. Do you remember Beanie Babies? I got stuck in the escalator at the Park Plaza Mall. I was in a biker gang for like 3 hours. Narcolepsy got me again!
And hundreds more.
My cast got covered in signatures and memories from the summer. A giant upside-down cross from a guy named Metal Dave. I had told him I had jumped from a moving car to another. This broken arm had been a highlight of the summer. Eventually, college started again. The late summer nights decreased, and it was time to get back to the real world. The problem was I still had no insurance and could not afford to get the cast taken off. My cast had been on for 12 weeks or more, and this seemed like too much. So 21 year old me did my best and removed it with a pocket knife. I carefully tried to save all the signatures and drawings, especially the upside-down cross from Metal Dave.
I had most of the cast off except the curve of the elbow. I sat in the back seat of my unairconditioned 1991 Honda Accord while my friend sat in the front and PULLED IT OFF! I could not lift my arm to my face for weeks. I was sure it was still broken.
I look back on that summer with the fondest memories of dancing in packed clubs to rock music, too much PBR, and putting a garbage bag on every time I showered. I think about the confidence that the cast gave me to talk to anyone, and how I can channel that into everyday life.
But how did I really break my arm? I was in the Summer Olympics that year as a pole vaulter. Due to a faulty pole, I slipped and crashed into the judging table as Hillary Clinton yelled “smooth move.” Lawsuit is pending.