77 Stitches

So my grandmother was a Nazi.

I should probably elaborate. When I say "my grandmother was a Nazi", I'm not using it in the general, loose and--frankly--offensively glib way that people tend to use the word "Nazi" nowadays. I don't mean she was just kind of mean or that she insisted on running a draconian house or that she didn't bake me cookies. All of the above is, in fact, true, but none of that should be used to gloss over the fact that my grandmother was a true to life, actual Nazi.

Born in 1924, GG was 15 or so when Hitler started all that unpleasantness with Poland and, being of solidly German stock, the idea that she was part of the purest, strongest, bestest pile of genes in all the world sat well with her. By the time Operation Husky started, she was not yet 20 and regularly soliciting donations around the neighborhood for "the war effort", which she would then bundle up and send to Berlin.

So like I was saying, my grandmother was a Nazi. Which fit with her personality well because she was, without resorting to exaggeration or hyperbole, completely fucking evil.

When my sister and I were kids GG lived in this two story brownstone over by my school. It was large, always rather dusty, and the yard was surrounded by one of those cast iron fences. You know the ones; made of iron bars, about four feet tall, and at the top of each bar, there was an ornamental piece of iron, shaped like an upside down heart, or a spearhead. I know what you're thinking: it's foreboding, but not particularly sadistic.

So in one corner of the yard, butted up right next to this chest high, spike fence, there was a trampoline.

HA! Fuck YOU with your "not particularly sadistic." This wasn't a scenario where she put it in the corner while it wasn't being used and it was pulled out to the larger, non-spike-covered middle of the yard for playtimes. In fact, it was chained to the fence to prevent just such a thing. She always said it was to keep it from being stolen, but even at 7 I was able to smell the bullshit brewing in that statement.

I was kind of an odd child, so the idea of jumping on a trampoline was in direct opposition to my distaste for bouncing and heights, not to mention my (very real) fear of getting stabbed. Not by a fence post, mind you, but by a tightly coiled spring that finally decided to snap and send shrapnel in all directions.

But for the other children, both relatives and from the neighborhood, the temptation of a trampoline--even one that came pre-packaged with a coin-flip's chance of death or disfigurement--was difficult to resist. The trampoline was used on occasion. Usually some stupidly brave child would sneak over while their parents were at work or busy making dinner or some such thing and bounce for a thrilling minute or two until they were spotted. I have to assume that my grandmother was threatened with police action at some point or another but, being as young as I was, I don't remember any specifics. All I know was that the trampoline stayed there in that corner until I was 16, when it was struck by lightening.

One day, when I was about nine or ten, my sister decided she was going to try something. My sister is nine years older than I and has always been kind of a dim bulb. So when she watched one too many episodes of The Bionic Woman and decided that that "jumping over walls" shit looked pretty neat, she got herself an Idea.

Don't get ahead of me.

The trampoline was fairly large, so the distance from the middle of the surface to the fence was probably 4 feet or so. The fence extended about a foot and a half above the height of the jumping surface, and beyond that was the sidewalk. My sister rigged up a few sheets of butcher paper between a couple of sticks and tied them to a couple of the fence poles, so she would have a "wall" to bust through as she "sha-na-na-na-na-ed" her way to glory.

It's funny how the human mind works. Some of us can grasp calculus with no effort at all, while others need to have their universal remotes explained to them daily. Similarly, there are certain ideas that we all just seem to gravitate to naturally. Think about the old Nintendo Entertainment System. When you put a cartridge into the machine and it didn't work, what did you do? You pulled it out and blew into it. This was before the internet and help lines. No one told us about it, and there were no strategy guides on the matter. We all just figured it out.

So when my sister started putting this butcher paper wall up on the fence in front of the trampoline, the mind of every kid on the block had one of those moments. Even kids who were in their houses or playing at the school playground down the street came running for apparently no reason. It was like a dog whistle had gone off; kids just perked their ears up and thought "someone's going to Bionic Woman over that death fence."

By the time my sister had started her practice runs, there were probably a dozen of us gathered. Some in genuine excitement; some in morbid curiosity. My sister bounced high and took off, towards the middle of the yard, in an effort to gauge how high and far she could go. Once she was convinced she could make it, she set her eyes on her makeshift wall and started bouncing.

There was genuine effort being put forth by the kids who'd come to watch. They wanted so badly to cheer her on like wild men, but too much noise was sure to bring a parent or two to the windows, and then the kabosh would be put on the whole thing. So while my sister jumped and stared at her wall, she was accompanied by an eerie, solemn silence. After six or seven bounces to get to the proper height, she pitched herself forward, and jumped at the fence, one leg shot out in front of her, balled fists in a running position fore and aft, doing her very best Jaime Sommers impression.

What happened next was, well, about what you'd expect. She cleared the fence easily and burst through her paper wall to the sudden, explosive cheers of the accumulated crowd. I mean, seriously, the fence was sharp and all, but it's not like it was the green monster or anything. Any teenager with a working set of legs could have made it over that thing.

Of course, my sister wasn't terribly coordinated, and when she landed she was unable to keep her balance, pitched forward across the sidewalk and put her arm through a car window.

The aftermath was awesome. Blood, screams of various octaves and duration, and children scattering like roaches with the lights turned on. Nobody wanted to be seen to have been anywhere near this mess. If a circus had randomly passed by just then, a dozen kids would have joined up and disappeared.

I went in and called mom and the ambulance (GG told me to close the door and that my sister could have paper towels, but no lemonade because it was HERS) and attended to my sister--who's impression had switched from Jamie Sommers to Carrie pretty damn quickly--as best I could. When people with better medical training than I came and finally took her to the hospital, I stayed at GG's house and waited for everyone to come back to collect me. GG told me to stay out on the front steps, because I was now too dirty.

Eventually mom and my sister came back for me and we all went home. My sister, eyes puffy and swollen from crying, showed me the jagged zipper of stitches that ran from her wrist to her elbow. She let me count them on the way home. There were 77. I was envious.

The idea of getting stitches horrified me but I was, as previously mentioned, a rather odd child and I enjoyed both symmetry, and the number 7.