As the time nears for me to biologically become a parent I find myself looking back at the various adventures, that inevitably led to mishaps from time to time, that were a part of our childhood growing up on a farm. And I always end up shaking my head in disbelief that somehow we managed to defy what must have been the greatest odds ever, to not only survive but survive with all body parts and all siblings intact and whole.
No exaggeration.
A truly noteworthy feat.
Seriously.
Take for example, 'little' KP as a bouncing baby boy--though truth be told at the time of this particular incident he was more of a toddler than a baby. And the bouncing part of this description is incredibly important to remember.
And no, you siblings of mine who are reading this, this is not THE KP story that you all think it is. Seriously, this is at the most a PG-rated family blog and that particular story at least earns a PG-13 rating though most men would say R.
Back to the story that this is, rather than rehashing the one it isn't.
Growing up our family was known from time to time to gather with other devout Catholic families to pray together (the Rosary) and to hand make Rosaries to be smuggled to the other side of the Iron Curtain (where, we were told, the Communist leaders there would torture and kill people if they found them carrying these religious items--yup, totally cheery, stress-free childhood).
On this particular sunny spring day there must have been 5 or 6 moms, their eldest daughters, and their Rosary kits sprawled about our rectangular shaped living room slipping 10 Hail Mary beads on string, knotting it, one Our Father bead, knotting it...you get the idea, and chatting about various family and religious topics.
The kids that were too young to string beads were romping upstairs and from time to time we'd hear a thump through the ceiling, pause to hear if it was followed by a cry and when it wasn't, went back to making Rosaries.
I remember coming back from my fourth or fifth trip to the bathroom (yup, I was slacking off) when all of a sudden, right when I entered the living room, one of the mothers let out a blood curdling scream. Like the rest of the women and girls in the room we quickly looked to where she pointed.
And managed to see the last segment of my still-in-diapers-brother, KP, fall out of a two-story window.
I didn't know how to swear yet, but whatever my equivalent was at the time, you better believe it was going through my head.
The women rushed outside to check on the toddler KP and I rushed upstairs to check on the rest of the kids. I flew up one and a half flights of stairs and into the bedroom at the end of the hall where sure enough, a gaggle of tattered boys were leaning out of the second story window. They appeared to be looking for something and I quickly assumed it was my brother.
I was wrong.
Let me back track and give you a little landscape here: this was a two-story farm house, circa 1910. Not only did the windows not fit perfectly in the sills, but there weren't such luxuries as screens either. This particular window opened up to the tin roof covering the ground floor porch.
In the innocent way of little boys, the window had been open and somehow a toy figurine had landed on the steeply sloped tin roof.
Well the obvious solution was to dangle the toddler out the window onto the roof and tell him to reach for the toy.
Brilliant boy logic.
It is still undetermined exactly who was holding KP and how and why they let go. But let go they did and my still-in-diapers-brother, KP, skidded down the tin roof where he was caught in a rather large Camellia tree. Which managed to hold the stout lad on each branch for approximately 2.5 seconds before dropping him down to the next limb. Through the large downstairs picture window, it looked like he was bouncing from limb to limb--hence the blood-curdling scream.
It's likely that this branch-bouncing (see I told you to remember he was a bouncing baby boy) saved him from real harm or, as I like to exaggerate (but not by much)...from death.
And there you have it. One very true example of how it shocks me that all my siblings survived. Whole and all body parts accounted for.
See? Perfectly normal, nice guy.
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