Broken Bones and Bunk-beds

My older sister and I shared a room when we were younger. For a while our beds were side by side but they could also be stacked as bunk-beds. Both my sister and I have very vivid dreams and they occasionally wake us up in cold sweats. I always wondered why my older sister could seem to fall back asleep more easily than I could. She admitted to me once that she always told herself that if there was a monster under the bed it would eat me first, since I slept on the bottom bunk, and would leave her alone. I am kind of glad I didn’t know that when we were younger.

My younger brother had a run of rotten luck for several summers. He always managed to break a bone within the first couple of weeks of summer break. He broke his arm by falling off of his scooter, tipping his bike over, and tripping playing soccer by himself. He even managed to break his ankle joint by stepping backwards wrong. The odd thing is that the only time he went to the hospital the day he broke his bone was when he broke his ankle joint. We knew something was terribly wrong when he curled up into a ball and refused to even think about putting his weight on his foot. All the other times he broke a bone it would take several days for us to realize that it was broken. He would mow the lawn, play basketball, and other such physical activities.

When I was in college there were two years where I slept on the top of a bunk-bed. I never minded sleeping on the top, I was always several inches taller than my roommates and it was easier for me to get onto the top bunk. The only problem was that the ladder was designed poorly and it was nearly impossible to use if you wanted to actually get into bed. I would use a chair and jump from the chair into bed.

There was one evening where my roommate had already gone to bed and I didn’t want to disturb her so I tried to quietly get into bed. I didn’t have enough umph to actually get into bed so I came back down and tried to land on the chair. I landed funny and tipped the chair over. My feet got tangled up in the rungs and I nearly fell over. I decided that was a sign to stay up later and went to the living room to talk with my roommate that was still up. In the morning I noticed that my foot was bruised but it didn’t really hurt so I ignored it.

Spring Break started the next week and I ended up playing volleyball for several hours and I walked to my work more often. My roommate was concerned since my foot was now yellow and purple. I agreed to go to the doctors, but was so stubborn I walked the mile to the doctors and then the two miles to the hospital to get it x-rayed. I finally had to admit that my foot was actually broken. I was given a walking cast but I always took it off at eleven at night because I figured if I had walked on it for a week then it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t have the cast on the whole day.