I was born in the winter of 1974, exact date, June 30. This is the year that my life story should start, but with all interesting tales of man, it actually goes back about 4 years previous.
My father, an armoured crewman on an M113 Armoured Personnel Carrier, of the 2/14th Light Horse Regiment, Royal Australian Armoured Corps, was doing his tour in Vietnam. He had completed his daily duties, if I rightly recall, of transporting a patrol out to their bivouac for the night, and returned back to base to a starry Vietnamese night. It was hot, always was as he would say, he had missed the 4.00pm downpour, which you could set your watch by, and had just finished dinner.
After cleanup, he was heading to get some shut-eye, and felt the first drops of rain on his skin. As his diary excerpts go on to recall, he stated that he had looked up in amazement, as it usually did not rain at this time of night, and to top it all off, there were still stars out. A couple of seconds later, a drone of a heavy aircraft had reached his ears. He had seen the outline of a spraying aircraft, and like all men serving in the field, thought nothing of it. That was until June 30, 1974..
.. When after marrying his now wife, they had their first, and only surviving child. That's right, you guessed it, moi. The doctors had done X-rays on my hips. They did this because dad had stated he was a soldier, and they assumed by his age, that he was in Vietnam, and he had confirmed this. They checked my left hip, everything was normal. It was when they got to the right, that they had found out something was pretty significantly wrong. I had a condition, at the time called Hip Dysplacia. In reality, the ball joint of my hip had not developed, therefore, the socket had not developed in response.
At this point in the story, we fast-forward a to close to my first birthday, 1975. For the next year or so, I could be found in a tangle of strings, plaster-of-paris, swab cloths and sheets. At such a young age, I was in traction. You would rightly say, and I would rightly agree, "at least it wasn't hydrocephalus, or cancer", and as I said, I rightly agree. It wasn't. It was just the beginning.
I will now endeavour to take you a few years into the future, as writing about the past, allows us the luxury of time travel. I was three years old, I think maybe four. We were living in a two story house. Typical 1950's construction, wooden house, almost telegraph post stilts. Ground floor, depending on the level of money thrown at it, covered with a room, or at the lower end of the budget, even more wood, spaced evenly apart to make a garage. Or in my mum's case, a ginger beer bottling operation, which had it's occasional mishap.
At that age, I had a fascination with trains, in some respects today, I still do. But at the time, it was the steam train. Just a few years before they were retired from coal-hauling. I would hear the train, and according to my parents, my ears would prick up like a dog at the sound of a rabbit. If I had fully-functional legs, that weren't wrapped in a full lower-body cast, I would have ran down the stairs and been calling for the train to pick me up. Instead, I was a bit more dexterous than this would have you believe. According to my mum, both of my parents thought I was pretty immobilized by my plaster, so they had the "luxury" of not having to constantly watch me and were able to get household chores done. At the regular time, I recall it was about 3-4pm that the trains came, the heard me excitedly calling for the train. What they didn't expect, was how clear my voice was, just like I was outside with them, instead of playing with my toys on the floor where they had left me. Yet here I was, as mum looked at where the voice came from, perched on the window's ledge, yelling and waving at the train. Mum called out urgently to dad, who sprinted up stairs and dragged me back into the house.
I am sure that you can imagine, how shocked my parents were. For starters, their son was not fully immobilized, secondly, they could have easily have lost their only child if the weight of the plaster had not been balanced so precisely, and thirdly, they were at a loss as to how this had happened. Being parents, they decided they were going to pretend to go downstairs. They had timed it so the trains were just about to come, and sure enough, mum figured out what I had done. I was left in the centre of the room, with my toys. I checked around the house, and leopard crawled over to the couch. Then, with some agility, I managed to drag myself up to a standing position, lean over to the left at a near 90 degree angle, pivot my right leg, and pushed it forward. Then I pulled myself onto the chair, and repeated the process to get on to the window ledge.
Next thing I know, the couch was moved to a different part of the lounge room, and the television was placed there instead.
I hope you enjoyed my first post. Feel free to critique writing styles, share some stories, or just leave a comment. Stay tuned for part two, coming soon to a computer screen near you.
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