It wasn't the first time.

Looking back it was obvious that accidents and our family went together. It was something the various hospitals made abundantly clear. In fact if we hadn't moved around as much as we did we may have had visits from other services as well with serious questions being asked. Although, we improved the odds enormously, simply by being a family with eight children in it’s number. Eight, active and curious children I will add. It’s simple reasoning. Consider how high the roof really is from the ground and does a sheet work as parachute? Consider that although another family member tried it (and failed)…. You were not that person, and, you could surely do what the others couldn’t.

The list of injuries however was long... and varied. basic sprains (wrists, shoulders, many, many ankles), finger crushings (the old washing machine rollers caught many of us I’m sure), numerous and varied broken bones, (not counting those re-broken by the doctors who were “not that happy with how they were mending”) dislocations, fingers, wrists, shoulders and necks (Note: don’t do judo in a small bedroom space, it is not recommended) and serious back injuries (falls, trips down stairs, thrown from horses, Another note: Don’t stand in the middle of a see-saw when people are using it), swallowed pins (yet another note: don't put them in your mouth to hold.... and if you do, make sure the sharp end is sticking out...), a multitude of serious cuts, slashes and bites (from dogs, not from each other), Stings (thank goodness for anti-histamine it has kept my sister in this world) clawings (cats…. and occasionally each other, Roman wrestling does that....so does fighting.), various contact injuries with each other and also with discovered creatures of one kind and another. (Fortunately we lived in an area with few poisonous species or no doubt our ranks would have been considerably thinner). Electrocution (brief and forceful… though some other members of the family suggest it should be tried again to clear my thinking), and the list goes on.

But it was also a sign of our outside living (driven out more to the point), as mother attempted to retain some semblance of a house, when she planned for visitors, needing that gratification of an adult conversation rather than refereeing and adjudicating our constant disputes. And so we explored the world… and discovered you can break, bend, snap or twist nearly all of the 208 bones in the human body….. not counting the muscles, tendons or our attitudes!