7th Grade

Seventh grade started normally, with the special surprise of having my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Forson, again be our teacher. However, this year was to be a turning point, for myself, as well as for the nation and the world. Not that those things are related.

As an active Catholic school student, I spent a lot of time on my knees, getting on my knees, and rising from being on my knees. I was an altar boy, so was often an 7 AM or 8 AM weekday Masses. Plus, the whole school marched the three or four blocks to the (not-yet-restored) Cathedral to attend Mass for First Fridays, in addition to any holy day. And of course my family attended Mass on Sundays.

And kneeling started to hurt.

It felt like there was a pebble inside my knee. I felt it especially when kneeling, even on a padded kneeler. When it didn't go away, I told my mom; she took me to see our family physician, Dr. DeVito; he sent me to an orthopedist in Jacksonville, who, after X-rays, informed us that I had something called Osgood-Schlatter's Disease and would require either six weeks with my left leg in a cast, or six months in a leg brace.

No one explained anything further, but I've since looked it up. Osgood-Schlatter disease is primarily an overuse injury that occurs during the growth spurts of puberty, particularly in children who are active in sports involving running, jumping, and bending, like soccer and basketball. That wasn't me, of course. However, I did ride my bike a lot, and like I said there was all that kneeling.

Osgood-Schlatter is caused by the repeated stress on the patellar tendon, which connects the kneecap to the shinbone. This stress can cause inflammation and pain at the point where the tendon attaches to the shinbone's growth plate. While it's more common in boys, it can affect anyone going through periods of rapid growth and increased physical activity.

The treatment options I was given, a cast for six weeks or a brace for six months, reflected the common approaches to managing Osgood-Schlatter disease at the time. The goal of these treatments was to limit the movement of the knee and allow the inflammation at the tendon's attachment point to the shinbone to heal.

I offered to do the cast, since six weeks sounded like a lot less than six months. Plus, I knew money was tight and the cast would be a lot cheaper than the custom-made brace I would otherwise have to use.

So I started with the cast. I couldn't go out to play after school because I couldn't ride my bike or hike, and what else was there to do on Anastasia Island in 1963 in winter when it was too cold to swim, which I couldn't do with a cast, anyway? So I spent afternoons in bed reading or watching the TV my mom moved into my room from the living room. I actually found myself watching late afternoon soap operas. Luckily that addiction never stuck!

I used to plan a TV network I wanted to own someday, on which virtually all the TV shows were based on DC comic book heroes. Yes, that's right: I invented Netflix in 1963. But also a schoolmate, Harry McLaughlin, often came and hung out with me and talked about science and comics, which was nice. I've oftened wondered since, why he started coming by, since we didn't really hang out at school.

Plus it itched like crazy. And after three weeks, during which the cast kept cracking and breaking so that it had to be repaired twice, they finally removed it, and I was measured for a brace, which had to be custom built. On a Friday in late November, my mom and grandparents drove us to Jacksonville, Florida, to have it fitted. Obviously I got off school that day for this.

We didn't have a radio in the car. When we got back to St Augustine, my mother stopped at the bank, leaving my grandparents and me in the car to chat. But when she returned she was ashen. In fact, she looked so distraught that for a moment I didn't even recognize her. The President's been shot! she cried as she got back in the car, shaking.

It was November 22, 1963. My brace was fitted the day JFK was killed.

In the weeks that followed, unencumbered by the plaster leg cast, I was able to regain some activity. It was still tricky to ride my bike, since the knee lock on the brace would drop into position whenever I straightened my leg on the downstroke. And hiking was still out. But at least I was no longer bedridden.

The TV returned to the living room.

From today's perspective, this was all unnecessary. (Not the Kennedy part.) Today, I'd have been told not to worry about it; just take it easy, don't do anything that hurts, and it would clear itself up.

But this was 1963 and I was in 7th grade. I had never particularly liked sports (Dodgeball? Really?!) but this period would have been crucial to my learning the basic skills needed to compete in them; and I missed it. So I never did even learn the basic rules of football, baseball, or basketball. (I'm now 72 and still couldn't explain to a 12-year-old how to play any of them. This of course added a wedge between me and my classmates, who, as near as I could tell, lived for that stuff.

It also gave me more time to listen to music and read—and I read a lot. By this time I had discovered the Young Adult Science Fiction Novels of Robert A. Heinlein, and read them all. I also read all 43 Land of Oz books, the ones by Frank Baum as well as those by his successor, Ruth Plumly Thompson.

So, I was possibly better informed than most of the other kids in my class, when Mrs. Forson had to take a few months off and we wound up with the Substitute Teacher From Hell…