My 7th Birthday

The day was August 2, 1976.  The day before my 7th Birthday.  I was out  riding my bike up and down the street with all the neighborhood kids.  At this time we live up on Harbor Circle, in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  We were lucky because we lived at the top of the hill.  But there was this house just down the street that had a long driveway.  If you peddled just right and turned just right on the street, you could coast up to my house. 

I made it up the driveway and turned my bike around and started peddling my bike really hard before I had to turn onto the street.  The one thing about this driveway was as it meet the street, there was a gravel on the edges.  Well I went to turn onto the street and hit the gravel area.  All of the sudden the bike tilted to the right and I was on the ground.  I tried to get up, but I was in a lot of pain. 

Someone went and got my parents, and I was rushed off to the Children's Hospital.  I remember being there for hours and the doctors determining that I had broken my leg, but not just broken it, I had twisted the bone or what they call barber polled it.  I remember them setting my leg and it being very painful.  I remember them putting on the cast and that is all I remember of that night.

The next day I do not remember very much of it.  I remember that we were going to have a party, but it had been canceled.  I remember being out of  it all day, it must of been the pain medication that I was on.  I remember there were a lot of presents, but do not have a clue who they were from or what they were.  I think it is probably one of the only times I do not remember who gave me what for a birthday or Christmas or what I got.   And I remember my mom, who baked a lot back them, made me a Grover Birthday Cake, that looked great.

I was in this cast for about 3 months.  The first month I went most of my time in a wheel chair.  My Grandma and Grandpa Hatch had come out for my birthday and were also going to tour the Great Smokey Mountains.  So for a week, my grandparent pushed me through a bunch of museums.  Also that this time, President Spencer W. Kimball, came out and dedicated our chapel.  So being in a wheel chair I was a prime target to shack hands with prophet. 

In September they gave me a rubber heel and some crutches and told me that I was now wearing a walking cast.  So I had to go to second grade in this cast and walk up stairs at school.  Oh it was so much fun.  NOT!!!

I remember getting the cast off, and my leg was all hairy.  And it still hurt to put weight on it.  This lasted for a few weeks in which I was still on the crutches, and it took awhile for me to relearn how to walk.

I can't really say that this was one of my favorite Birthdays, because I really do not remember a lot of the day. But it is still one of the most remembered.





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