The Purple Sucker

 I was the only one of my parents 5 daughters that had a broken bone.  It was the summer of my 7^th birthday and like most kids of my generation, it was a daily ritual to play outside most of the time.  Hours were spent with my friend from across the street.  We roamed the neighborhood with certain fearlessness and viewed the series of unfenced yards as our playground (times were different then!). 

At that age, my passion was swing sets.  There was never a swing that I didn’t want to jump on and pump my way to the blue sky.  Was there any easier way to feel free?  I craved that moment at the very top of the trajectory when there is that barely perceptible moment where it feels like everything stops.    Getting to that pause was what I strived for.  After that, I could rhythmically swing without boredom until the street lights came on. 

This particular afternoon, my friend and I were elated to see that our neighbors had erected a swing set that was much taller than the average backyard unit.  We jumped right on and began with the usual declaration of ‘Let’s see who can get to the top the fastest!’.  We were neck and neck as the maximum height approached but then I noticed my friend jumping off, which was strange since she was closer to winning.  I didn’t have time to think about that paradox before becoming aware of the larger sensation of moving forward in the swing yet at the same time falling backwards.  It turns out that the swing set had not been fixed into the ground and was toppling over due to our exuberance.  The cross-bar hit the ground at the same time my body was passing underneath.  Fortunately, it was just my knee that was impaled by the triangular ‘V’ that holds the chain to the bar. 

Perhaps it is true for all people who experience accidents, but the memories of that afternoon have a Technicolor quality to them.  I remember looking at my leg and seeing what looked like a gray slimy alien coming out of my knee.  I remember being puzzled and scared.  It was years later before I realized it was my bones I was seeing.   My dad and my oldest sister took me to the hospital.  Turns out it was just a dislocated knee, which was really a stroke of luck when you think about it.   There was a nurse who performed the x-ray and assisted with the relocation, the 5 stiches, and bandaging.  I’m sure she was a wonderful person and a good nurse but in my trauma, I decided I didn’t like her.  At all.  After my knee was wrapped up and my tears nearly gone, she smiled and presented me with a box of suckers from which to choose, although sadly they were the cheap the kind of suckers that have the twist of paper for the handle that gets all pappy if you don’t eat it fast enough.   I remember looking at her and thinking in disbelief, ‘Seriously?  After all this, all I get is a lousy sucker?’ But not wanting to be ungrateful, I took my favorite flavor, grape.  Or should I say purple since most certainly no molecule obtained from a grape plant were used in its production. 

But I never ate it.  Somehow it made its way into the junk drawer in the kitchen.  Doesn’t everyone have one of those?  The place where an odd assortment of items coexist – like the piece of used wire or the tiny instructions to some long ago purchased gadget.   Every time I opened the drawer to search for some item, I would see the purple sucker waiting for me in one of the cubby holes.  The more I saw it, the greater an existential dilemma became for me.  I found myself wanting it yet not wanting it at the same time.  I would open the drawer and pause and think ‘no, not today’.    

At some point, it felt like more than a year, Mom cleaned out the junk drawer and threw out the 10 month old coupons along with other items that were considered to no longer be of potential benefit.  The purple sucker disappeared.  I was relieved. 

Years later, just like coming to awareness of the truth about the gray slime alien in my knee, I realized that this dilemma was brought on by my young brain encapsulating all of the scary experiences of the accident into that disk of colored glucose.  But the funny thing is even after 55 years, I still think about that purple sucker and wonder what would have happened if I had eaten it.