I’ve got a bad scar on my elbow that required over thirty stitches. I lied to my parents, and have felt no desire to come clean about how I got hurt, until today.
An old friend reminded me of this story last week, and teased me about having not having written about it yet. “How can you say you are truly putting yourself out there if you have been honest about that?!”
So here goes.
My mom had knee surgery at our local hospital while I was in high school. This took place during what we can refer to as my "testing my boundaries phase." Oh, hell…let's be realistic. I may not have outgrown that phase. Anyway, I digress.
She was in the hospital for a few days, and while my dad was at work, my brother and I were supposed to be responsible enough to take care of ourselves. Or, in my case, irresponsible enough to take total advantage of my parents not being home.
This was a rare occurrence in our home. Having a stay at home mom had ample benefits, but it put a real cramp in your social life if you wanted to get into mischief. So when the opportunity arose, I exploited it.
Unbeknownst to my parents, I took the day off from school one of these days. I don't recall how I was able to get out of it, but it likely had something to do with my keen skill with a pen. There is no mistake that even today, the "Luconi" part of my signature is not unlike my father's. My mother's careful script was way too hard to copy; my dad's was far easier to forge. Though I used it rarely, it got me out of a few gym classes. And I believe it got me out of that day of school, if memory serves. And though I never used it again, I had practiced it so many times by then, it stuck all these years later. No one in my family has ever seemed to notice or comment on that.
I invited my boyfriend over, as well as my good girlfriend and her boyfriend. We didn't have a vehicle to carry out our own version of a Ferris Bueller day, but we made the most of a day off of school. And around mid-afternoon, when I should have been coming home from school on the bus, I found myself in the shower.
We lived in a 200+ year old farm house. While my parents had done a beautiful job updating it, there were still some parts of it that remained quite "vintage." Like the ceramic soap dish that was built into the shower. At some point in time, my brother had been lifting weights in the shower (yeah, THAT happened) and broke the soap dish, leaving a massive jagged edge that had yet to be repaired.
There I am, in the shower in the middle of the day, and I remember turning around to grab some shampoo. RRRiiippp. There goes my right elbow. Blood everywhere. I jump out of the shower. I am bleeding through towels. I don't know what to do. Four idiot teenagers go into major action planning mode.
The boys take off. They want nothing to do with this, and realize they will be in massive trouble if we get caught. My girlfriend and I call her mom, who is a nurse, to ask for help. She isn't home yet.
So we decide to walk to her house. It is three miles away. We figure that by the time we get there, her mom will be home and she will be able to take us to the hospital. And for the long journey we are about to take, we triage my elbow with the most absorbent thing we can find. A ginormous maxi-pad. We brought extras.
By the time we got to her house, I was pretty weak, and her mom was pretty angry. Angry at our idiocy for walking all that way rather than calling another adult for help, and angry at our bulls*it story of how this accident occurred. Nope, she wash't buying why I was in the shower in the middle of the afternoon.
And neither were my parents.
We entered the hospital, and conveniently, there were my mom and dad. My mom, still in her hospital bed recovering and my dad stopping by to visit her before coming home to my brother and I. Turns out, you need parental consent before having stitches or other procedures done. Fantastic.
So I told them I had been in a mud fight waiting to board the bus after school and had gotten filthy. I was showering after I got home and ripped my arm. They clearly thought I was full of it, but realized I was in serious need of help. I got the stitches, and my dad drove me home. He was not happy with me. For those of you who know Fred, that last sentence is an understatement.
Over the years, they have periodically asked me, "What really happened that day?" Obviously, if I had come clean, they weren't going to ground me at age 23, 33, or 43. But one of the best parts of being a kid for me was knowing that I could have at least one or two secrets from my parents. And candidly, there is some stuff they are just better off not knowing. They were great parents. Let's let make them feel any differently about that.
I mean, I turned out ok in the end. My family was very tight when I was growing up. I am certain doing rebellious stuff was my way of ensuring that I was capable of having some independence and of being able to make decisions on my own. Granted, I made some pretty poor decisions. And I learned from every single one of them. And, yes, I had some fun along the way.
So Mom and Dad, if you are reading this, there you go. I'm sorry I lied about the mud fight and skipping school. And no, I didn't lie about sneaking out of the house more than once. I was too scared to do that again. And no Dad, I didn't sneak your Porsche out. I was too scared to do that too. That's why I saved up and bought one of my own. But I'd suggest we leave the rest of my high school "experiences" that you have questions about alone. I think one secret every 31 years is plenty. :)
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