Hole in My Knee

I was in Cub Scouts when I was in 5^th grade.  Our scout troop met in the gymnasium at the county elementary school located in Alamo, TN where I grew up.  Because I lived in the city limits, I didn’t attend the county school, but I was familiar with the building because of various events I had attended there over the years.  The gym had a stage at one end.  Our meetings would usually start with some free play time in the gym while we were waiting for everyone to get there.  There would be basketballs available so several of us would usually shoot if not organize teams and play.  There were also kids just sitting around talking, running around, or doing any number of things to entertain ourselves.  During one meeting early in the fall, I was with a group of guys playing around on the stage. I don’t remember what we were doing but I think we decided to move to the basketball court. I was lying down on the stage and decided to roll over to the edge, then ease off onto the court.  As I put my legs over the edge of the stage, I noticed a hole in the left knee of my red jeans. For some reason, the stage in this gym had several bolts sticking up in what seemed to be random places.  I had rolled over one of them and ripped a hole in my pants at the knee.  Then I looked inside the hole and saw that there was a matching hole in my knee. 

I didn’t scream or make a scene.  I showed it to some of my friends who quickly got the attention of the scout leaders. My parents had dropped me off at the meeting, so the scout leaders took me home.  My parents took me to our family doctor’s office which was open that night.  Dr. Hickman had stitched my head up a few times before. The first time was when I was too young to remember.  My parents had given me so much high-powered cough I had gotten wobbly, fell and busted my head open on a baseboard.  The next time I’d been sewn up was after getting hit in the head with a baseball bat when I was trying to play catcher and stood too close to the plate. 

Most of the pain that I remember associated with the hole in my knee was related to the shots that I got in the wound to numb it and to prevent infection.  The stitches formed a reverse “7” pattern on my knee. Later, my mom would stitch up the hole in my red jeans with a matching pattern. I used crutches to get around the next couple of weeks although there was probably no good reason for it.  This included a family trip to roll yards on Halloween.

I still have a reverse “7” scar on my knee.