A Stitch In Time

On New Years Day when little Kathy was just sixteen months old we were spending the day at my parents house in Coronado. I was there to watch the parade on television and to let Kathy enjoy some time with her grandparents. She was new at walking and was a little bit adventurous. The back of the old house had some steep steps that she was interested in.

Some time that day Kathy took a tumble down the back steps. She cut herself just above her eyebrow and it looked like it needed a stitch or two. I called our doctor and he answered the phone. He had us go to his house so he could look at the injury. You can tell this is a different era than the time we are in now. This was the first day of 1957.

Dr. Hamby decided that Kathy needed a stitch or two. The good doctor and his wife opened their office so they could tend to my little one. She was immediately taken care of and despite some tears did just fine. We didn't have to spend hours waiting for medical care. She may have a faint scar as a reminder of that day so many years ago.

It seems as if each child has a story to tell about getting stitches. My nephew Gary had more times of getting stitches than I can count when he was little. One time when he was at my house he fell out of the lower bunk, and it was real low. He hit his head on a small object on the way to the floor. Of course he needed stitches. It was always small accidents like that, but they added up.

Laura had to have stitches when she was hit in the head by a toy army tank. The tank had a little help from her brother Griff. At the emergency room in Coronado they had to make sure it was not parent abuse. We assured them that it was caused by her little brother. She reaffirmed that was what caused the injury. Thankfully she was o.k. after getting stitches.

Bill was innocently walking on the beach with his friend and his friend's mother when he stepped on some glass. He got a large cut on his foot near his toes. I was at work at the time, one of the first weeks I worked at the Avenue Variety store in Coronado. That seems to be when a number of things happened in our family. Paul was available to take Bill to the emergency room to get medical care. The other mother might have gone too. Bill needed a lot of stitches in a delicate part of his foot. I was vigilant about picking up glass on the beach after that. That is a good reason for no glass on the beach.

Griff needed stitches when he tripped over his shoestrings at school. He may have been in second grade, or first grade. It is almost humorous that tripping over his shoestrings would cause his stitches as he was a very active little boy and I would have thought that one of his adventures would have been the cause. When he was older he had some very interesting bike adventures. They are a story in themselves. For one, he lost some teeth on "suicide hill." I'll remember to write more about his adventures another day.