It was late May in 1959 when I stuck a pitchfork through the top of my foot.
Back then, school didn’t let out until the end of May, and I had only a day or two left in my first-grade year.
I was running to the bus on this particular morning when I stumbled over a pitchfork that my sister or I had left tines-up in the grass.
I should pause here to admit, yes, there are several things wrong with this story: a., why were my sister and I playing with a pitchfork? b., why did we leave it in the yard? c., why was the grass in the yard tall enough that we couldn’t see the pitchfork?
I can’t recall the answers to those questions all these many years later.
What I can recall is lurching forward that morning, a single tine of the pitchfork penetrating my sneaker and foot like a stake through a vampire. I recall that clearly, as well as flopping around in the dewy grass like a newly gigged frog while my friends on the school bus watched.
It really hurt, but I am pretty sure I didn’t cry until the bus was out of sight.
I recall the doctor advising my mother to soak the foot a few times a day and to twist and wring it so the wound would drain properly. She took him at his word and yanked my foot around like the wrestlers used to do on Saturday nights at the Stockyard Coliseum.
I recovered quickly enough. As soon as a good scab appeared and I could stand without pain, I got to go outside and play with my dog and go fishing.
For several years afterward, my foot would swell and hurt if it got cold, but that eventually went away, too, and now I have to struggle to remember if it was my right foot or left. I’m pretty sure it was my right, but there isn’t even a scar left for verification.
Now, today, sitting at my desk and flexing my instep, I am pretty sure that sticking a pitchfork through one’s foot is the perfect metaphor for life’s troubles.
A too-big credit card payment came due? It was a pitchfork in the foot.
Car broke down?
Stomach muscles sagging like the suspension in a ‘73 Pinto?
They were pitchforks in the foot.
Over time, most things fade away, leaving memories but not scars, very much like my foot six decades later.