I'm flying!

One night we got to stay up late. Something special was going to be on the television. It was a real, live action Broadway musical, the story of Peter Pan.

We were enchanted with the tiny figures singing and dancing on our little TV screen. And flying, especially the flying. How did real people actually fly? We didn't have a clue. It was magical.

The songs stuck in your head: “I won’t grow up!” “I’ve gotta crow!” And the one about flying:
“I’m flying! I’m flying!
Look at me way up high,Suddenly here am I

I'm flying.
I’m flying.
Over bed, over chair

Duck your head, clear the air

Oh, what lovely fun

Watch me everyone

Take a look at me

see how easily it's done

I'm flying!”

Look at Peter Pan soaring back and forth over the children’s beds! Now look, they’re all flying – Wendy and Michael and John. It looks so easy! They just spread out their arms and fly…
I could do that! I want to fly!

Joe B. and I were fascinated with the story of Peter Pan. It was so hard to go to bed after we watched this exciting show – Crocodiles! Pirates! Fairies! Flying!

Upstairs in our dark bedroom it was impossible to go to sleep. My head was full of the story I’d seen and the wonder of flying. I could do that! I could fly!

I jumped on my bed, higher and higher, trying to fly. I didn’t jump straight up and down, that wouldn’t be flying. I bounced up with my arms spread out trying to soar up in the air. Higher and higher:
“I’m flying!’
Bounce!
“I’m flying! “
Bounce!
“I’m…..CRASH!

The sound of my body hitting the floor brought my mother racing up the stairs. She found me huddled by the bed, out cold, with blood gushing from a gash in my head.

I’d flown headfirst into the sharp pointy corner of the square iron knob on one of the bed posts. Ouch!

I don’t actually remember much of what happened when I came to. There was a lot of commotion. I was in my mother’s lap, wrapped in a scratchy blanket. We were in the car and Dad was driving very fast through the dark night. Mother held ice to my head. The towel around the ice was all bloody.

Where was Joe B? What did they do with him while they rushed me to the emergency doctor?
Maybe they left him with Thelma? Maybe she came down to stay with him? I don’t know – ask your Dad.

I remember sitting on the hard table and the doctor stitching up the slash on my head. The little room we were in – it must have been at a hospital – was cold and everything in it was white, except where I’d bled red over things. I was embarrassed to be out in my pajamas. I could feel the scalp pulling when the doctor pushed the needle in, but it didn't hurt. He used thick black waxed thread to sew my head back together.

My mother held me in her lap all the way home. I thought she’d be furious. I hated to think of the scolding I would get for this escapade. What punishment would be awful enough for what I’d done? But she didn’t say anything. I think she thought that getting hurt was enough punishment. She didn’t have to say “don’t jump on the bed”. I wasn’t ever going to jump on the bed again.

Dad didn’t say anything either. But he got rid of that bed, that old white iron bed that had been my mother’s when she was a girl. I got a bed with no posts at all.

There was a big scar for a long time after the doctor pulled the stitches out. Then it got to be smaller and smaller. It is still there. You can still see a little white crease where it was. I can still feel the dent in my skull.

And that’s how watching television led to my hurting my head when I was just about the same age as you were when you hurt your head.