We were playing spears in the yard, hurling old broom and mop handles at rocks, Laginza’s stockade fence, sticking them in the dirt, and at targets of opportunity. The points became splintered and full of dirt, so when one of them hit me just below my right eye and I burst out in a caterwauling wail and ran for my mother, pieces of the spear came with me.
It is possible I did not pause in my wailing all the way to the doctor’s. I don’t remember how we got there. I do remember the intensity of my crying and screaming and wailing moving up several notches when he came at me with the scalpel to dig things out. Treacherously, I believe my mother held me down. I further believe I must have froze with terror as the evil Doctor Sheletskey dug in my face with his knife. He didn’t get it all. If you look close you can still see two little dark spots.
My mother should have known what she was getting herself into. When I was still in my highchair she turned her back for a minute and turned back around just in time to see me standing and launching myself out of it like Superman. Not even a year old and already I had a pretty good black eye. It was only the first in a long list of bruises, cuts, broken bones, and fights with which I terrorized my mother throughout my childhood. So I suppose she was only getting a little revenge when she held me down so the doctor could dig ineffectively in my face.
Somewhere in there I was told not to cry like a baby and be a big boy. After that I stubbornly refused to smile or say thank you for the suckers with the flexible loop handles he gave me after doctor appointments and the next time we went I ran around the office and screamed like hell when he tried to give me a shot.
This is the same doctor who prescribed Belladonna, also know as Deadly Nightshade, an extremely powerful and dangerous hallucinogenic, to my older sister when she was extremely young.
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