I was at school when my niece called me to inform me about my sister. I got very emotional on the phone. My niece couldn’t understand why I got so upset; after all it was her mother that got hurt. My sister did okay and recovered, but wasn’t about to visit my mother and let her know. It happened late during the week, so I could go in that weekend and be the one to visit my mother. I let her know that my sister wasn’t feeling well, but didn’t disclose the real reason she couldn’t visit.
Continue reading Original Story – Part 5 – It’s a matter of trust.…

Nineteen eighty-five was the year of the breaks, both good breaks and bad. It was the year I purchased my first house. It was the year Hurricane Gloria hit Long Island. It was the year I met the woman who was to become my wife. It was the year, in a family that had never broken a bone, had their bodies start to fall apart.

Continue reading Original Story – Part 4 – A break in the action…

Softball games were played on Sunday, therefore school was the next day. This being June, the part of the year that we try to cover 6 months of curriculum we haven’t covered in the 3 weeks we have left, I decided that I couldn’t miss it. I arranged for a substitute teacher to be hired to work with me. I came in and taught until I was too wiped out to teach (about 45 minutes), went to the principal’s office, where there was a futon that I could use and slept. When I woke up, I went back and taught again. After two days I was well enough to solo for the entire day.
Everyone wanted to know what happened
Continue reading Original Story – Part 3 – What’s the story?…

At this point I wasn’t sure if I broke anything, I did know that I was in a lot of pain. This was during the era when not everyone owned a cell phone. Luckily one of our player’s, house was right next to the playing field. He went home to call for an ambulance, while the rest of the team tried to give me first aid. They had realized that something was amiss. It wasn’t long before the fire department’s rescue vehicle turned up, my arm was immobilized and I was put into the ambulance. Dennis, the player who made the call, decided that he would ride with me in the ambulance. Mack decided that he would drive Dennis’s car and follow the ambulance to the hospital so that Dennis and I would have a ride home. This wasn’t totally altruistic on Mack’s part. He was pleased that this also got him out of having to go home early (since the game was cancelled) and have to mow his lawn which is what his wife had requested of him that morning. Continue reading Original Story – Part 2 – The Break…