Page 66 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
In any event, in his haste, he was presumably unaware of his imme- diate surroundings. That was not a good thing because, given the locations of home and school, his most efficient path placed him on a trajectory that was perpendicular to the nearest trolley tracks. Unfortu- nately, there was a trolley car that must have been late for its Hebrew School as well. And he was struck by it. Fortunately, in a palpable dem- onstration of the anthropic principle, it was he who was there to tell the story to me. But for his ability to heal during the ensuing seven-month period of convalescence in the hospital, not only would he not have been able to repeat the story, but it is, of course, also true that I would not be here to tell it to you. Most of the damage was done to his legs, but he walked naturally and bore no scars that I ever saw.
The real question, of course, is why did he repeatedly tell me the story? Was there, as there often was, some sort of object lesson in it? “Life was tougher for me than it is for you. So appreciate what you’ve got”? Maybe, but he didn’t need a story to repeat that idea for the nth time. “Always put your books down in the same place”? Not likely, although orderliness was undoubtedly a virtue at home. “Punctuality should be taken very seriously”? Doubtful, although my parents cer- tainly believed that. “Haste makes waste”? Probably not. Too clichéd. “Avoid trolley tracks at all cost”? As we shall see, that could not have been it. “Stay the hell away from Hebrew Schools”? Appealing, but inconsistent with the fact that I was obliged to devote five years of my after-school life to the East Midwood Jewish Center Beyt Sefer. No—I don’t think that the point was to make a point as such. True, there was some semi-heroism in the episode, but that, I think, was not the whole story. My broken clavicle was the first in a series of injuries that I sus- tained (broken arm at two, broken thumb at twelve, broken wrist at sixteen) and operations that I endured (herniotomy at eight, osteochon- dritis dissecans on the medial femoral condyle surgically repaired at twenty-six, and innumerable arthroscopies thereafter) during his life- time. With the obvious exception of the repair of the broken clavicle, Dad was with me for all of the medical procedures that were necessi- tated by those injuries. While I’m not suggesting that I heard the story
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