Radius in the 3rd Grade

It was a bright and sunny day in March. The year 2000 had already started, and fear of the Y2K bug had nearly vanished from recent memory. It was during that spring in the month of March that I broke my arm. It was the first – and so far, last – time I had ever broken my arm. (That one incident with my tooth is another story.)
The day started out like any other school day. My father prepared me for school, feeding me breakfast, while also attending to my four-year old sister. (At the time, I was nine years old and in the third grade.) When I was all ready for school, I went out to our front street, Alcosta Boulevard, to wait for my carpool ride. My dad waited with me.
Everything was still going smoothly. My ride got to school, and my friend Lia and I stepped out of the van, thanking her mom. Joining other friends, we lined up in the courtyard for the Pledge of Alligence and school prayer.
Things were still fine and normal by recess time. I ran outside to the playground, but decided against going out on the blacktop, as I was not that interested in basketball. (I still am not.) I saw that my friends had already started to play on the realatively new play structure, and they were taking turns jumping off of a ladder-type thing which served as on of the entrances to the structure. I ran over to them, asking if I could join.
“Sure! You can join!” said Jeremy. “Go up the stairs there.” I did not stop to question why they were jumping off the playground; I just wanted to do whatever they were doing.
Ian was in front of me. After he jumped the approximate four feet down, it was my turn. With three or four people waiting behind me, I stepped onto the ladder, and jumped.
Whether it was the wind, or a bad launch courtesy of my foot, something went wrong. Suddenly, my feet were not the closest thing to the center of the earth anymore. With a soft crunch, I landed in the tanbark on my left side.
Rather quickly, people started gathering around me. I couldn’t think clearly, but I knew that getting up would hurt and something was wrong. Mrs. Blair, a teacher’s aide, ran from where she was standing by a tall redwood tree over to where a small crowd was gathering. “Jordan! Are you okay? Are you hurt?” she desperately exclaimed.
“I think he broke his arm,” remarked Kyle, who was standing above me, blocking out the sun.
“It hurts bad,” I said, in too much pain to care about grammar.
Since I hadn’t broken a leg, I was able to walk, so with the help of my friends and Mrs. Blair, I walked 660 feet back to the classroom. In the stairway to the second floor, we passed Mrs. Johnson, the principal.
“Oh my goodness! What happened?” she asked.
“Jordan broke his arm,” ventured Chad, who didn’t mind leaving recess to follow the excitement.
“Oh dear,” mumbled Mrs. Johnson, as she turned left to head into the office. We turned right and arrived at room 212, Miss Blake’s room. When she heard the door open, Miss Blake looked up, and immediately looked worried.
“Oh no,” Miss Blake said, coming over to us. “What happened to Jordan?”
“Well,” replied Mrs. Blair. “He and the boys were jumping off the playground and Jordan didn’t land right; he’s broken his arm.”
I had been looking at the floor until then, and when I looked up, Miss Blake was shaking her head, her black curls following the movements. “Lisa, could you please call Jordan’s mom? The numbers are on my desk.”
As she did that, Miss Blake looked at my classmates: Jeremy, Ian, Kyle, Chad, and Brandon. “Boys,” she started, looking at the clock, “Recess will be over in about three minutes. You might as well stay here until the rest of the class comes up. By the time you get down there, everyone will start coming back up.”
“What time is it?” asked Brandon.
“It’s ten twelve,” she replied.
I was still lying on the floor when people came walking into the classroom right as Mrs. Blair left. With my mom on the way, I knew I would be leaving school soon. Just then, the twins, Stephanie and Jennifer stood over me, looking down.
“What happened to you?” one of them asked with a lisp. I looked up at their condescending stares, pondering the question for a moment without even caring about their names. I replied simply, “I broke my arm.”
“Which one?” the other asked in a similar voice.
“Left,” was all I could say as I sat up.
A few minutes after Miss Blake started class, the classroom phone rang. It was the office; my mom was waiting. As I said goodbye to everyone, I realized that the pain was getting worse, and holding my arm up with my right hand wasn’t going to work for long.
In the office, they gave me a sling to put my arm in. Before my mom and I left, Mrs. Blair called out “I hope you feel better soon, Jordan!” I let my mom say thank you and goodbye, while I quietly wondered if that was all that Mrs. Blair could’ve thought of to say.
My mom and I got into her car; our first stop was our local doctor’s office. Dr. Humphrey examined my arm, and after a while, he came to the conclusion that I needed to be taken to the hospital.
When we got to the San Ramon Regional Medical Center, the doctors did the usual for a broken-arm patient: They X-rayed my arm, and determined that I had broken my radius, the bone in the lower arm which allows one to rotate their arm, (or more noticeably, their hand). The one thing I remember most about that trip was how excited I was to see the X-ray machine in action, and then to see the picture of my arm bones. My excitement escaped, however, when I saw the actual crack in my bone. A cast was made for me, and as they put it on, I was told to not get it wet.
As expected, I got to go home early that day (around 1 o’clock). As my mom and I drove home, I reflected on what I had learned that day. I learned that I should be more careful when jumping off of things, and I learned to not always do what everyone else is doing. Because of these two lessons, I have never broken any bones ever since, and I have never gotten myself into something that I would later regret just because “everyone else” was doing it (i.e., smoking, drugs, or alcohol. I assume that stuff tastes horrible anyway, and I never want to find out.)