Something Part 2

I hope that I am not boring you. I have never gone into this much detail before about my life. Maybe it is time to cleanse or something.

Sometimes, in elementary school, I would do something really stupid. I would go out on the playground and crawl in behind a bush and sit.

I knew that no one wanted me to play on their team. Here, I was the king of my own domain. I was in control. I would often sit there the entire time, drawing with a stick in the dirt.

I had one major friend in elementary school. His name was Rocky. That is right, his name was actually Rocky. He was a cool kid.

He was a loner and we fit together. We hung around together. I thought he was the greatest guy.

Later, in elementary school, his parents moved to Texas. I never saw him, again. I have thought about him a thousand times or more. I have wondered about him. I was told several years ago that he went bad in some ways. I do not know this, first hand. I hope it was just talk.

I joined the band in elementary school. I wanted to play the drums, but the band class had an overflow of guys wanting to be drummers. I had to play the sax. It was almost as big as me. I did not get very far. My grades started to go down and my mom made me quit band. I never did learn how to play the sax.

In Junior High School, my doctor decided to operate on my foot. He was waiting until I reached a cetain stage in growth. He said that the procedure would affect my growth.

So, I was taken to the Crippled Children's Hospital for surgery. I was in a ward. That meant that there were four beds in the room. I had the bed closest to the door. In the far left corner, next to the window was a guy named Jerry. he had been there for a while. Then, across from me, near the other door was a kid named Carl. The fourth bed was empty.

My parents visited me every day.

Jerry never had a visitor. We were on the third floor, I think. He was very sad. His mom would come to the parking lot, but she would never come up to the room. He would open the window and yell down at her.

"Mom, won't you come up and see me? He would yell. "Why won't you, mom?" He cried. He cried a lot.

Sometimes, I closed my eyes and ears to keep from listening to him yell down to his mom. It made me sad. Maybe she was having a hard time dealing with a son that had something wrong with him. She never came up.

Once, Jerry was caught trying to go down the stairs in his wheel chair. They brought him back. We laughed about it.

Then, they brought in Carl. He had something around his neck. It was some kind of brace. He had worn it for I do not know how long. All he wanted was to get his hair cut. The doctor had told them to not cut his hair until the brace comes off. I will never forget the day they took him down to surgery. He just wanted to get his hair cut.

They told him that if everything was okay that he would wake up and find the collar gone. He was so excited.

They took him away. He was put to sleep. When they brought him back to the room, he still had the brace on his neck. It did not seem fair. He just wanted a hair cut.

I kept looking over at him, waiting for him to wake up. Finally, he began to move a little. He was alone. No one was there with him. His parents were not there. No one was there to comfort him and tell him that he would be alright.

I watched him reach up and feel of the collar. He began to cry. I said something to him, but he turned toward the wall and sobbed. He did not cry; he sobbed.

His entire body shook. It was sad.

It was like that at the Crippled Children's Hospital. You had good days and you had bad days. The bad days were no fun at all.

We played pool from our wheel chairs. They had a lower table that guys in wheel chairs could reach. It was fun. We tried to escape from our room and go to the recreation room as much as possible. Sometimes, they would track us down and make us go back to your room.

more later.