Keeping a Cast

When I was seven years old, horsing around with my cousins, I fell and broke two bones in my forearm.  After the bones were set, they were stabilized in a cast that I wore for six weeks.  Of course, I remember the events of the injury, but I don’t know why I remember keeping the cast. It seems like such an odd thing to do.

I recall timidly watching the doctor saw the cast off of my arm and being asked by one of the adults (my mother?  the doctor?  a nurse?) if I wanted to save the object.  Now I wonder why an adult would ask me such a question.  Who would want an old cast?  For some reason, as a little girl, I replied, “Yes, I want it.”

The cast was shaped like an “L,” from being bent at the elbow.  It had covered my arm from the palm of my hand to my biceps.  It was white plaster and a bit bumpy, and it was signed sloppily in pens of various colors by friends and family.  I think the cast was lined on the inside with a thin white cloth sleeve.  It all smelled bad due to the fact that I had six weeks of unwashed skin beneath it.  (I could not get the arm or cast wet for the duration of the bones’ healing.)

 I brought the cast home, walked upstairs to the bedroom I shared with my older sister, and placed the cast on a high shelf –well, high to me at the time — above the display of my sister’s horse figurines.  My sister complained of the smell and my mother put the cast in a clear plastic bag and back on the shelf, where it stayed for a couple of months until I was ready to throw it out.

Was the cast a trophy of my having endured the broken arm?  Was it a memento of people giving me a lot of attention?  Why would I keep that cast?  I still don’t know.