Someone is always chasing me. I am off on a tear and getting chased down for my own safety, so they say. Or I am running from a KISS mask, and I am getting chased as a form of low-level torture. Or I have done something bad, like ripping all the leaves out of a tree I don’t like much, and I am being chased down for retribution. God help them if they catch me though, because when I begin a tantrum everything shuts down!
Sometimes I am being chased because my dad thinks I am so sweet and cute that he wants to give me a hug, but I am contrary. I don’t know why, exactly, because I like my dad better than anyone, and he clearly likes me best which makes everyone roll their eyes.
I draw a picture of my dad wearing his romper. Yes, my dad wears rompers just like me! Except his romper is more like coveralls with a zipper up the front. His rompers are also made by his mother, and also single colors of fabric and he has a romper in red and in blue and in tan, but not made of beach towels, made of something more durable. He wears his romper for fishing and going to the woods. The blue one is best for the same reasons my blue romper is best—everyone in my family has sparkly blue eyes, despite being part Indian, except my mom. My mom is no-part Indian. But she does have the blue eyes.
So I draw a picture of my dad wearing his blue romper, and I draw the bass-pro boat and then some dogs and cats and a mouse in a tea dress. I leave it for him for when he gets back from fishing, and lo and behold my dad gets back from fishing and finds my drawing of him in his romper and he wants to chase me down and hug me, so there we go, on a tear through the house, me hiding under the bed and him chasing me down, and then almost catching me, but I escape to the living room sofa where I begin my climb to the attic of my mind, up the arm of the sofa, and up along the back of the sofa like a tightrope walker, up and up higher toward the little mouse attic and the little mouse counterpane and my dad gets a hold of my arm and for some reason this time I don’t dangle, instead something just pops and that is that. The arm goes floppy. My mom begins to flip out. My brother comes from out of nowhere, and is standing in the room. He stands and stares.
I become hysterical. It is like a tantrum but even worse. My mother becomes hysterical. My father is becoming hysterical, also, but in a more contained way. My brother says, ‘Did you guys just break her arm?’ and then wanders off down the hall toward mom-mom’s side of the house, to play checkers with mom-mom. Then the three of us get bundled into the station wagon, and we drive to Joplin to the emergency room for kids, because even an emergency needs at least forty minutes.
Can’t we just go to the hospital by Vesta’s house? Vesta is my dad’s mom. She is the source of our Indian. She worked in a sewing factory all of her life. Now she lives in town and makes everyone rompers, and lives across the street from what I am quite sure I have been told is a hospital. No way, no way is anyone going to the hospital in this town.
And yes it is all very painful, it must be very very painful, because I scream bloody murder the whole way to Joplin, and continue screaming in the emergency room, and screaming sobbing choking on my own spit in the medical viewing room, and then a doctor comes in. My dad is sobbing and tells the doctor that he thinks he broke my arm. My mother thinks that sounds bad, and people are going to get the wrong idea, and hysterically tries to explain this is not precisely what happened, because dad was chasing me and trying to hug me and I was trying to get away, and that sounds even worse, and the two of them continue talking through the hysteria of what has just happened, and I continue to scream. This emergency room doctor just doesn’t even care. I am sitting on a little round swivel stool and he takes hold of the floppy arm with one hand, and spins my little round swivel stool with the other, and as my body spins, my floppy arm stays still, and then the arm pops again, and suddenly feels fine and also works enough for me to smack at the doctor and smack at my mother before I realize I am fine, and also feeling pretty cheery. I receive a lollipop, which is mercifully fruit color! Whew!
My mom is also feeling good: she was right all along, because I was going to get my arm dislocated, just not by the feed sack–tossing. My dad is feeling good also, because it turns out he didn’t break my arm, and he has learned a valuable lesson: don’t chase the kid, don’t try to hug the kid. The effect of having a tantrum for several hours is always like this. One feels purged, one feels to be a better person, and one is ready, even, for ice cream.