JUNE FOURTH

In the life, now more than five decades run and still ticking, there have been a few bad patches. One was the afternoon when a classmate, for a laugh, pushed me over in a bit of tall grass in Chicago. Unbeknownst to us all, there was a broken bottle bottom in the grass, and when the right arm met the glass, all chances for a career as a concert pianist vanished. So too, could have my life: severed were the flexor carpi ulnaris, the flexor digitorum profundus and the ulnar nerve. Unsevered was the ulnar artery, less than half an inch away from the knife sharp edge, which cut, could have spilled enough of life's blood out in jig time to effectively and quickly bring an end to the life under consideration. As it was, the muscles and other bits that sort of fell out when I looked to see what happened were exciting enough, but remembering my first aid lesson (one lesson) I shoved it all back in, applied direct pressure to the wound and placed a call to my home, where both parents happened to be. A considerable amount of racing around, doctor exams, and prolonged surgery followed, and a few days later I was back in school, my arm in a cast that was to be my companion for a year.
All a great bummer, one might think, but from that injury came one unexpected benefit that would, I think, have never come my way otherwise. A friendship, now nearly forty years old, my longest and dearest.
It's not the sort of trade an ordinary person would make if asked: great pain, tremendous anxiety and discomfort for a protracted length of time, permanent if minor disability, inconvenience upon inconvenience for years-- all against the promise of a new friend, one you didn't know, really hardly knew anything about.
And yet, looking back, one can see that it would have been foolish in the extreme, a wasted opportunity of unimaginable magnitude to have chosen not to make the trade.
But for a small, slight boy of 12, it's just as well that the matter wasn't put to him for consideration-- he might well have chosen the wrong path. Having the choice never placed before him leaves, at least, the possibility open he might have chosen correctly. We'll never know.
All we'll never know for certain is that the silver lining of that friendship is worth more than all the disadvantages of the injury, seven times over and perhaps even seven times seven. It's one of the defining characteristics of that boy, now somewhat older, hardly any wiser if wiser at all. But ever, ever grateful to the witless classmate who set in motion those particular wheels of fate.