Travel, Hike, Eat. Repeat.: riding in tubes with boys

I broke my arm when I was eight years old. I'm not sure that breaking a bone should ever be grounds for favored memory status, but somehow the time I did it makes the cut for me. Looking back, it seems like breaking a bone is a rite of kid's passage and a mark of a childhood well done. I didn't break it any old way, either. I broke it roller skating down a hill in my neighborhood. If I went back today, I might giggle at that hill's size, but at age eight, I might as well have been a mountaineer. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

My cousin Dee lived with us at the time. She moved up from Florida for college, and I got a built in roommate and sister in one. With a 10+ year age gap, she covered her side of our room in posters of movie stars and singers, and I still watched Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen movies (do you remember their mystery series? I. was. obsessed.) One afternoon, her best girlfriend came over, and they went for a walk to ~~gossip~~ talk. I begged to tag along. I had my roller skates on and laced, and I'd never skated around the whole neighborhood before. Dee relented but made me promise to stay behind them. They had boys to discuss, after all.

I practiced all my moves on that epic roller skating journey. I crouched low and rolled with my arms overhead, I skated on one foot and then the other, and I did that ultimate cool skating move where you cross one foot over the other on a turn. That one took me for. ever. to learn. You guys, I think I was wearing this red t-shirt with rainbow colored ribbons glued on to it. I was hands down the coolest.

My ego grew with every smooth move on my skates. And with that bomb t-shirt on, I got smug. I was invincible! So when we reached the neighborhood mountain, the behemoth stared me down and taunted me. I knew the best thing to do would be to take off my skates and walk down the hill. We were almost home. This was the last, final, terrible hurdle. Dee turned around, nearly at the bottom of the hill and shouted up, asking if I was okay, and shouldn't I walk down?

Walking is not as cool as roller skating, and I think I wanted to show off for Dee and her friend, too. So I got low and started rolling straight down that thing, at least 300 feet straight down, I'm telling you. I picked up speed, faster than I anticipated, more than I could handle, and I skated straight into... a mailbox.

I took out that mailbox. I hit it with so much force that it flew straight up out of the ground and across the yard, and I stared at it, wondering, How'd that get over there? And I didn't hear myself wailing for a moment or two over the sound of Dee and her friend screaming. They carried me home crying (them or me? really, it was about the same!). I broke my left arm so badly it had to be set, and have you ever had that done? It's pretty horrible. I'll just leave it at that.

The day after the doc put my bones back in place more or less and fitted my arm with a cast so big I think Homer could have signed it with The Iliad, we left for North Carolina for a camping and tubing trip with a big group of family friends.

I had been more excited about this tubing and camping trip than a new MK & A mystery VHS (this post is very embarrassing). It was my first time going tubing, and I was so excited and so adamant about not missing out, despite that pesky rule about not getting your cast wet that all the adults convened to discuss options and came up with this plan: tying a black trash bag around my arm and having me hold it in the air all the way down the river. (This was 1993 or so, has that casts can't get wet thing changed?)

I loved every single second. That is... besides vomiting my way up the windy mountain roads, taking out at least 3 branches with my nearly titanium arm, providing a wind rustling bag soundtrack the whole way down (I should've been famous with that bit), and learning to swim one-handed every time I flipped. Okay, I kind of loved those things, too. (Well, vomiting aside. I still get motion sick on mountains. And sea sick surfing. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!)

When the story of the time I broke my arm roller skating down Newnan, Georgia's Mt. McKinley, taking out a mailbox, puking the whole way up a mountain, and tubing down a white water river with one-arm in the air covered by a trash bag comes up at family dinners, we all lose ourselves in fits of laughter. And every single time, Dee stops laughing first and looks serious and says, "I still feel so bad." And we all crack up again.

I was so happy when I got that bulky cast off, but I learned a few things from the experience:

The weird, bizarre, and painful situations often make the best memories if you make the best out of them.

I would never be a professional roller skater, if that's even a thing, and I should never dress myself.

Books are a safer bet for me... but I'll always be a little bit of an adventure-seeking daredevil.

I love tubing.