Like many people my parents were divorced. My dad got me every other weekend and two weeks every Summer. He was a man that tried, but had many, many flaws. The one year when I was 7 or 8 he sent me with my aunt during the two weeks we were supposed to spend together. My aunt, my one cousin and myself drove from PA up to Canada. We stopped at my aunt's friends house to stay in Vermont or Connecticut or one of those New England states that run together unless you live there. Well the 2nd or 3rd day we were there I was riding a scooter, tried to do a trick and fell. I land on the kickstand and it went in my upper thigh. A scooter kickstand, back in the 80's, looked like a "u" with 3/4" arms at the top and one of those arms went straight in my leg. It took me a minute to realize what happened, but being a child, when I did I did what any kid would...screamed my head off. Help, help at a screechy, pre-puberty volume. Nobody came. So after a few minutes I stood up with the kickstand still in my leg and walked back to the house carrying the scooter (still embedded in my leg) next to me for 4 or 5 blocks.
This is one of my first life lessons that stuck with me. Ask for help, if it doesn't come you have the strength in you to make it back to where somebody cares. I still have a "v" shaped scar where it went.
All that being said, the more damaging part of that trip was when we eventually made it to Canada...all the cartoons were in French! That's messed up!
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