by Mike Covers
Even though I have never broken the law, I nevertheless have a tendency to go places where you just plain aren’t supposed to go. More often than not, this natural curiosity has taught me harsh life lessons, such as “don’t date girls from Delaware.”
Years before I made that blunder, however, there was another instance of my not-so-well-honed curiosity that caused me pain on multiple levels. Even though I was 10 years old at the time, I remember it well.
My mom was babysitting my then-newborn cousin (today, she is no longer a newborn) and decided that the day was nice enough to spend outside. My younger sisters and I, who were accompanying my mom on this particular sitting, agreed with her, since it was 1990 and tablets and smartphones had yet to be invented.
Popping my cousin into her stroller, we all walked about a half mile to nearby Governor Printz Park, a fairly sizable slab of green space in the suburban Philadelphia township of Tinicum. The park is situated right on the edge of the Delaware River, a wide body of water separating New Jersey and Pennsylvania that is 1 part water and 99 parts pollution. As such, the “shore” of the river was nothing beautiful. It was a strip of mud dotted with natural and man-made debris. It had all of the charm and allure of a 3-toothed, urine-soaked homeless person screaming at nothing in the middle of a downtown bus station.
In other words, I desperately wanted to wander around and explore it.
My draw to this sorry excuse for a “beach” was nothing new to my mom or sisters. They let me roam while they pushed my cousin around the green space of the park. I shook my head and wondered what they saw in that boring, monotonous setting, which didn’t have even one single piece of driftwood.
I wandered around the muddy area, walking on anything and everything. A rather large piece of rotting wood had washed up that day, patiently waiting for the tide to come back in and carry it down the river once more. Since it was just LAYING there, I had no choice BUT to walk on it.
I didn’t see the nail.
I was wearing Kmart brand flip-flops, made of a foamy material that offers one’s foot no more protection than a Ziploc bag. As a result, the rusty nail proudly poking up from the rotting wooden plank easily penetrated my footwear and blasted through the bottom of my foot.
Today, at the age of 43, if I see a mouse or cockroach 1000 times smaller than I am dart across the floor, my gut reaction is to unleash a high-pitched scream, jump onto a piece of furniture (preferably WITHOUT nails sticking out of it), and consider moving to a new place. So you can only imagine what kind of reaction I had when the arch of my fragile 10-year-old foot was invaded by a nail.
My mom and my sisters raced to the area. Judging from the commotion I was making, they were expecting to be met with a scene that properly reflected it, such as a shark bite or plane crash. Instead, all they found was wimpy, bespectacled Mike cowering in the mud, grasping his foot in pain, and screaming at a piece of driftwood.
Everyone gathered around and tended to me. The puncture wound had begun to bleed and it was quickly decided that our trip to the park was over for the day, possibly for the remainder of the 1990s.
“Can you walk on it?” my mom asked. Keep in mind that a half-mile stroll back to the house where her car was parked was ahead of us.
My face strained with tears, I shook my head no. I didn’t think I was ever going to walk again, EVER.
This presented a problem. How were we going to get me out of there? We all realized that the answer was sitting right in front of us.
My infant cousin’s stroller.
One of my sisters took my cousin into her arms and carried her while I, a 10-year-old boy with a standard-sized body, climbed into the stroller. As I sat down, another nail sliced into me.
Only this nail wasn’t physical, but rather metaphorical. And it shattered my dignity.
Honestly, picture this scene: my 7-year-old sister carrying a crying infant while my middle-aged mother pushed her (also crying) 10-year-old son in a stroller. Down several public streets. Fortunately, this took place in southern Delaware County, where such a thing is not that uncommon to see.
We got back to the house, I was carted off to the hospital, and given a tetanus shot. Looking back, I realize that it was a very necessary precaution, but at the time, it made me even more upset. What was this, shove metal sharp things into Mike day?!
Unfortunately, the hospital did NOT have a shot to cure my broken dignity.
