Broken Football Dreams

Have I ever broken a bone?

I mean, I never broke it on purpose. In fact, I remember that it was the Thanksgiving break of 2005. On my mother’s side, we have some family that drive in from Alabama and Missouri. It’s really the only time of year that we get to see them, so we try to spend as much time with them as possible before they leave.

My uncle used to play high school football, and as was tradition, we would play touch-football to where we wouldn’t tackle. I was 12 at the time, and my uncle was a lot older than me… and a lot bigger. I think when I was 12 I weighed in around 98 pounds. He was considerably larger, about 200 pounds larger.

We were on the same team. We had started the play. I ran out right field, and my other cousin went left. Since I being the bookish one, no one went after me because I wouldn’t know what I was doing. My uncle saw a pass. He threw the football.

The ball zipped through the sky, and I saw it! I threw my hands out and caught the ball, but suddenly felt this excruciating pain in my left pinkie.

The ball came down and caught my little finger and forced it behind my ring finger.

But I caught the ball!

My pinkie started swelling. The pain was bearable. We stopped playing football after that year.

We thought that it was just a sprain. The swelling did not go down, and the finger wouldn’t bend. We waited two weeks before going to my primary care doctor. He suggested we go to an pediatric orthopedic.

Unfortunately, the one doctor I needed to go to was pretty far from where we lived. I was already nervous because my mother had put it into my head that the doctor would probably need to re-break my finger to get it back in place, and I couldn’t handle that.

Of course, with my nervousness, and my mother having to drive in a new area, we had a car accident on the way to the doctor. Everyone was okay. We were five minutes away from the doctor’s office. We got there; no one was in the waiting room, yet we waited two hours before they placed me in a room. While in the room, I waited another two hours before the doctor came in to let us know that the pinkie was broken…

I waited for the pain. I knew it was coming. What other choice did I have with the doctor rebreaking my finger?

Instead, the doctor looked at my X-ray and said that the finger was indeed broken, and the only way to treat broken fingers with by taping it alongside another finger.

We waited for this doctor for four hours only to be told that I could’ve used tape?!

So far that’s the only bone that I’ve broken.