The Summer Before 6th Grade
By
J.P. Nix
Summer is finally here! No school, no studying, no more having to dodge the school bully, and no Miss Porter, the teacher that I never saw smile or laugh all year, not even once. 5th grade was hard for me as was 4th grade when I had Miss. Mobley, the meanest teacher in the world. I think all the teachers took tips on how to be mean from her. She had to be 110 years old because it would take that long to get that mean. Could it have been that I was a rotten student that didn’t study and didn’t want to learn, and would be looking for a way to get out of trouble before I got in it? Nope, that wasn’t it at all. Miss Mobley and Miss Porter were just that mean. But now summer had arrived, and I closed my books on the last day of school, and 5th grade was over. As I walked home that afternoon, I wonder what adventures summer had in store for me. It would not take long and I would find out.
All summers before had been great. Riding bikes, hanging out with friends, maybe get a neighborhood game of baseball up, or go to Atlanta to see the Braves play a Sunday afternoon game. Sometimes the neighborhood kids would build a wooden ramp that we would put at the bottom of the steepest driveway to ride our bikes down to build up speed to see how far we could jump. And before you ask, we didn’t wear helmets, elbow pads, knee pads, or any other protective gear. It was the 1970’s, we were kids, and we thought we were indestructible and without fear. Looking back it’s a wonder that I made it out of childhood in one piece. However dangerous or careless I was back then, somehow I made it to twelve years old. And I thought I would not live to see thirteen.
The first Saturday after the last day of school, my older brother David suggested that we go fishing. I had a consistent cough that morning that I just couldn’t get rid of.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I just got a little cough that won’t go away.”
“Are you sure you want to go fishing?”
“Yeah,” I coughed again. “I’m okay. It’s not a cold or anything.”
……..
After we got back home, and put our fishing gear up, David told our mother what happened at the lake.
“Mom, Paul coughed almost every breath. He said he wasn’t sick, but he’s got the cold chills about an hour ago.”
Being Saturday, I had to wait until Monday to go our family doctor, Garland P. Bennett. The first weekend of summer vacation was spent in bed taking cough syrup, aspirin for the fever, and throat logengers to keep my throat wet and hopefully keep it from hurting.
The first thing Monday, I was in Dr. Bennett’s office having x-ray made, and blood tests done.
He walked in the room carrying it and showed it to me.
“I wanted you to see it,” he said.
To me, it looked like a black piece of plastic that someone had scratched up with a white crayoloa crayon.
“He’s got pneumonia,” he said to my mother as I looked at the x-ray.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s what it looks like to me. I guess.”
He smiled at me.
“The bad news is,” he told my mother, “it’s a viral pneumonia which means that there isn’t any good medicine for it. Were just to go have to treat him, and hope he gets better. I’ll give you some prescriptions that will help him rest, and treat the pneumonia. I want to see him in a week to check his progress.”
………………………………………………
“Mom,” I said as she drove us home. “I don’t want to die.”
“You’re not going to die Son,” she tried comforting me.
“But Doctor Bennett said that there wasn’t any good medicine for this. And people die from pneumonia!”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m sure in a few days you’ll feel just fine.”
Moms are like that. In a few days everything will be fine. A few days seem quick to any adult. But to a kid, time goes so slow. A few days would seem like forever.
Whatever meds I was given did make me rest. My routine for the next week was identical everyday. Wake up in the morning, take medication, go back to sleep. Wake up at 4:30, take medication, watch Gilligan’s Island, eat whatever I could and go back to sleep. Couldn’t tell if I was getting better or not, I never was awake long enough to be find out. Sunday I took a turn for the worse.
Oh I was sick! Sick! Sick! Sick! Cold chills, coughs, body aches, chest hurting, my body couldn’t get warm enough. No matter what position my body was in, or how many blankets I had on me, I couldn’t comfortable enough. And then some awful happened that told me my life was about to be over.
One by one, my Mom, Dad, sister, and brother filed in my little room and asked if there was anything they could do for me to make me feel better. Mom even asked me if I wanted her to take to me to the hospital.
“No,” I said. “They’ll just send me back home, and I don’t want to leave this bed.”
…………….
The next morning came and on our way to the doctor’s office, Mom picked up my Grandmother to take her to the eye doctor that was near Dr. Bennett’s office.
Oh I was sick. Sicker that I had ever been in my twelve short years, and I begin to think it was all a plot to get rid of me. And mother was the instigator of this assassination attempt on my young life.
It all became very clear to me then: 1st my brother took me fishing out on a hot summer day when all I had was a cough, 2nd I’m diagnosed with pneumonia in one lung, and 3rd, the day before I go back to the doctor, I get sicker than I had been all week. I knew someone was against me. But why? What had I done that was so awful to have my life stricken out from me underneath me at such a young age
In the waiting room, I sit in a chair that’s only purpose is to keep me from lying on the floor because that’s what I wanted to do. It took whatever energy I had to sit up. And I feel sicker with each passing minute waiting for the nurse to call my name.
My body couldn’t wait any longer, and whatever I had on my stomach that morning wanted to come up. And come up did it! In the waiting room with all the other patients looking on at me getting sick, and making them sicker in the process, I knew my life was coming to a close. Just how much more was I going to have to endure of this torture?
They take me back, and right after I get cleaned up a little, the Doc listens to my chest and orders an x-ray.
Coming into the room his hands are empty this time, and instead of addressing me, he talks to my mother.
“The pneumonia has spread, and now is covering both of his lungs. Take him to the hospital, I’ll call and get him a room.”
Mom drove over to pickup my Grandmother who was still waiting to see her doctor. It’s the 2nd week of June and hot. I’m lying in the backseat of a LTD Ford. Oh I’m so sick! I guess I was moaning and groaning so much, my mother had had enough.
“I’ll call your Uncle Junior and maybe he can pickup Grandmother, and we’ll go on to the hospital.”
Here’s another example of why I think she was trying to do me in: Instead of dropping me off at the front door, she parked at the end of the parking lot. In reality she parked at the first parking space she found because the lot was full.
Even though it was probably less than a few hundred feet, for someone who couldn’t breathe it was like walking 10 miles. Every few steps with Mom helping me walk because I was so weak, I’d have to stop and rest for a couple of minutes. Oh I was sick! We finally go to the front entrance after the minutes it took to walk from the parking lot, and I had to sit down on the curb and catch my breath. Using the last bit of strength I had, I walked in the front and sat in the first chair I saw.
Mom told the admittance nurse I was there, but my room wasn’t ready. Oh I was sick. I sat in the chair with my head hung low.
I saw Mom talking to one of the nurses a few minutes later who asked if needed a wheelchair.
“Yes,” she said. “He’s kind of weak.”
As they wheeled me down the hallway, I thought, “This is it. My life is going to be over right here.”
Not being able to breathe, and having no energy at all, I realized that the hospital staff was in on my demise with my mother.
The first they did after moving me from the wheelchair to the bed was a nurse came in with this plastic machine with the colored plastic balls in and had me blow in this nozzle to see if I could move the balls. Whatever breath I had in me was now in the machine with the plastic balls that didn’t move which I blew into it. And now I’m super light headed. Oh! I was sick! But somehow even that hadn’t done me in.
Next, a male and female nurse come into the room, both dressed in white t-shirts, white pants, and white tennis shoes. I thought they were Angles sent from heaven to get me. Little did I know, they were sent by the hospital to beat me up. They rolled me on my stomach and begin to beat on my back. Then something happened that told me without a doubt my life was over. In the middle of this, my Dad walked in the room.
In all my life, I had never known Dad to get off work early, take a day off, or even take a sick day. If Dad was here, I was in trouble. There was no question about it.
I looked at my Timex watch that I had worn every day since I got in for my ninth birthday. It was only 2:30. Dad never got home before 4:30.
“Dad,” I said it’s only 2:30. How did you get off early?”
“I kept calling the house with no answer, so I called Dr. Bennett’s office, and they told me y’all came here.”
For the next 5 days I spent in the hospital, they would wake me up in the middle of the night to give me some kind of medication, beat on my back, make me blow in the machine, or just to ask me how I was feeling.
That Friday, Doctor Bennett came in and told my mother I could go home in the morning.
“You come here for a week and you get well,” he laughed. “At home, your Mom didn’t give your medicine to you did she?”
“I did to,” she laughed to.
I didn’t think it was all that was funny. The first two weeks of summer and I spent them being sick.
“Don’t let him over exert himself, or get hot for at least two weeks. It could relapse, and it might be worse the second time around.”
Relapse? Yuk!
So for the rest of June and the first of July I had to spend in the house, only going out for short periods of time.
The end of August and I was back in the hospital for another week having to have my right foot operated on for an injury that had occurred years before that made my foot grow wide instead of straight. Long story.
That was my summer before sixth grade. And for the first 3 months of 6th grade, I spent with my foot in a cast. Double Yuk!
The end