Flying Kites with Broken Fingers

When I was in grade 5 my school planned an end of the year, after class, bike ride picnic with our parents. In which all of the year five students bike down to fish creek park to have a weiner roast and also fly our kites. Now I don't know about you but my family in the 80's were not the wealthiest of families, we were not destitute, but there was no frivolous spending especially on something breakable like a kite. So instead of buying one my dad and I built one together, with wooden dowels and black garbage bags. Now some people like flash and fancy when it comes to kite flying, but I just enjoyed making a kite with my dad to the point of being extremely excited to go to this picnic and send it on its maiden flight it in the park.

However on the day of the picnic, our phys ed class was outside playing baseball, with a bouncy squishy ball, I was the short stop and near the end of the class I went to catch the ball, and I very nearly had it when it rolled out of my hand with only my little pinky finger getting caught and jammed (or so I thought) as it left my hand. The bell rang, and my finger hurt, but being a timid child I didn't tell my phys ed teacher about it, instead I went back to home room too excited to go on my biking/picnic/kite flying trip. As I packed everything for the day up my finger throbbed more, and eventually I went to my trusted home room teacher and asked her for help. She was busy preparing for  the trip, and was irritated by my coming to her with this problem. "Well if your finger hurts maybe you shouldn't go on the bike ride" was her response, and mine back was "oh no it doesn't hurt that bad, maybe we can just tape it and it will be fine." She was annoyed, I was wasting her precious time with this little insignificant problem, but I wanted to fly my kite. She taped it up and sent me on my way. My hand hurt the entire bike ride, and it hurt all throughout the picnic, and it hurt through the kite flying, but there was no way I was going to miss this event for anything let alone a broken finger.

My kite was amazing, it flew the highest, actually it was the only kite that flew. I was elated with this kite, the best kite in the world. It was a home made kite, something I made with my dad, it was AMAZING, everyone wanted one, they looked at me through envious eyes. Then the worst thing imaginable happened. A tree flew into it's path and there the kite got stuck. It was a devastating blow, my amazing kite stuck in a tree! What were we to do? what if it didn't fly after this? what if I couldn't get it out? it's not like we could go and make another... we fished it out of the tree but it did not come away unscathed. There were little holes where the branches pierced the garbage bag, it would never fly now : ( wait... it's flying... my kite is still flying... it was truly the most amazing kite ever!
The picnic ended, as did the kite flying, and I had to bike home in finger aching pain, up the steepest hill, and I endured it all with no complaint.

Later that evening I could no longer endure the pain. My parents knew I had hurt my finger, but they too thought it was nothing, until I was up all night in finger throbbing pain. Finally they took me to the emergency room, where after waiting forever, they gave me an x-ray and found out that I had broken my finger, and not only was it broken it was "a bad break"(hooray for doctors). A rubber squishy ball broke my finger at the joint, and a piece of that joint was no longer attached to anything... this break required surgery, and after the surgery it required a summer full of physio. I got flowers from my gym teacher, but not a word from my home room teacher. What a Bitch!