Calm and Collected

In the summer of 1968, only a few days after my ninth birthday, we older Jenkins kids with some of the neighbors were playing outside our house. In the course of our rough-housing, I landed awkwardly on my right wrist and broke it. Nothing gruesome – it was what they called a greenstick fracture. Of course all I knew at the time was that my wrist hurt and that it had suddenly swollen up grotesquely. My sisters and I screamed, and I ran into the house. Mom examined me calmly in the kitchen. She made arrangements so that I could be taken to the emergency room at the hospital in Winner (24 miles away). I believe it was mom who drove me there (and back with my new cast).