It was as if a cow came falling from heaven and landed smack on top of me. One minute I was running, catching, and having a great game, and the next minute I had doctors looking all over me. Football was an expected sport for most boys in the town I grew up in, and if you played well, you were indestructible, or so we thought. During my eighth grade year, I was having a wonderful game and I too thought I was capable of anything. It was a high pass that required a massive leap into the air. The pass was caught, but I hadn’t thought about my landing yet. But oh, I would be fine; I always was, until this landing. I came down on my arm as though it would have still broken had it been made of steel. The popping of the bone alone was enough to turn your stomach. That unfortunate day changed life as I had known it for a while.

Yes my voice still squeaked, and my hormones ran strong, but for the most part my days never changed. The thought of being able to move any part of my right arm had left my thought process for the time being. It was the most

Every day father would come home complaining about his terrible day at work, and how the old man in charge wasn’t paying a penny more than he was required. But it was not just the boss that was the money problem. Every night at the dinner table we would sit down in silence waiting for fathers speech that had become as common as the table prayer. It started off with the day at work, but slowly made it around the entire table letting each one of us know what we couldn’t be buying all the time.

awful thing a thirteen-year-old boy could possibly imagine. I could not write, I could not eat, and as for taking a normal shower I had no hope. I felt like a helpless baby left to die. Life around the house was not so great either.

Father took me to the hospital after a long three months to get my cast removed. We talked like men the whole way there and back. We stopped to get a burger, and father didn’t even complain about how much they cost. We ate and talked like men, but more importantly we talked like friends. I never knew until then how important it was for a son and a father to have a good relationship, but I would not trade my father for anything in this world, including another broken arm.

Had it been a television shows it would have made quite an amusing comedy, but this was real for us, and we didn’t think it funny. It started with mother every night

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