A Girl We Knew

There is nothing like a construction site to draw kids.  When I was little, a house was being built on the next street over.  We didn't find out about what was going on until quite a bit of the framing was up.  That was good because as long as we stayed on the flooring, we couldn't fall linto the basement.

We rode our bikes over to the site quite often that summer, in the evenings when all the workers were gone.  No one did any damage; we just looked around and were generally nosy, but we should NOT have been there.

The house was built by a place we called the gully.  There was a fairly steep slope going down to it and then farther down, there was a long ditch.  We played in that area probably more than we paid attention to the house.

One evening a friend we knew fairly well, but didn't spent all that much time with, came along.  We didn't really want her to come, as I recall.  Her participation was looked upon as an annoyance, although we weren't mean to her.  We had discouraged her from coming in just about every way.

Everything went along pretty well until it was time to leave and retrieve our bikes up on the sidewalk.  The girl was ahead of me and starting climbing up the slope.  Then I really don't know what happened.  It wasn't that much of a slope but she started carrying on about her leg hurting and she couldn't go on.  Since she was a bit of a drama queen, we didn't believe her.  But she continued carrying on and then added crying to the problem.

Someone had to ride their bike over to get her dad.  No phones, no cell phones, didn't know anyone who lived in the other houses.  He had to carry her up the slope and off she went.  We all figured we'd see her in a day or two and that would be that.

Turned out she tore the ligaments in her knee on both sides!  A terrible injury to be sure, but one that probably shouldn't have occurred on a relatively small embankment.  I'm thinking that she had a weakness to begin with or it wouldn't have happened.

Still, it kind of shook the rest of us up because first, we hadn't believed her and we had poo-pooed her complaints.  And second, although we did the right thing and got her dad, we hadn't been very supportive or understanding of her problem and pain.

I always felt guilty about the girl because in those days, knee injuries were given the same basic treatment.  The scars looked like railroad tracks running down both sides of her leg and they were permanent.  Forever.  No one touched her, hurt her, pushed her, bothered her, or injured her.  No one was even near her at the time, but we all felt that collective sense of guilt.  And we didn't talk about it either, because that's how it works a lot of times with us.

We visited her after she got home from the hospital, and a couple of weeks later played Monopoly in her basement for hours.  Her mom and dad didn't blame any of us; to be sure we had pretty much done all we could to keep her from going in the first place.  But whenever I saw her after that even into high school, I felt bad.

I wonder -- did we every say to her, "I'm sorry?"

Lenten quote:

"Christ has no body now, but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which
Christ looks compassion into the world.
Yours are the feet
with which Christ walks to do good.
Yours are the hands
with which Christ blesses the world."  - St. Teresa of Avila