May 2000; I broke my arm

I understand that children cry wolf for attention, I get that. But my name is not Peter, and when I say my arm is broken, I expect people to believe me – especially the “first aid trained” secretary at Beulah Junior School in Thornton Heath, Croydon.

Now it’s not very often when a child has more medical common sense than a trained adult, but it does happen.  It’s 10am, a sunny May afternoon (I know it was May because it was the week before my seventh birthday) and I was playing in the playground. We were playing IT , as most kids of our age did, as I put both my arms out to reach the wall that was HOME before the boy who was IT got me, the wall suddenly got a lot closer and I ran arms akimbo into it.
Crumpling onto the floor like a cartoon character that’s been flattened by a train, one singular thought pulsed in my brain. I’d never felt such pain before - I knew my arm was broken.

So there’s  me. Seven years old and standing in front of the secretary, telling her I’ve broken my arm and that she needs to call my Mum. Clearly, the bone misshapen in my left forearm wasn’t enough for her. She told me to stop being so melodramatic and to go back to class. Because I was seven, and my Mum had always told me to do as I was told I did, it was English class and we were reading TS Eliot’s Book of Practical Cats.
I sat in class silent as a mouse, which was unusual for me at the time I am told. Unable to hold my arm up anymore I let it lay on the table as if completely severed.

Lunch break came and went at midday, but I didn’t go out to play – I didn’t climb on the frame, I didn’t run with my friends. My arm was bruising now and an underlying tone of purple was erupting beneath my semi-translucent peach skin, tears still fresh on my face. Still I am dismissed by teachers and my mother is not called.

Three o’clock and my little face must have beamed at the clock. School let’s out and I left my class, hauling my book bag along with me, in my good arm obviously. Tess Mather is waiting outside to pick me up and because seven year old me was taller than all my classmates I could see over all their bobbing heads to my Grandmother. Upon reaching my Grandmother, I promptly burst into tears.  My arm hurt and no one believed me.
Now, Tess works for the NHS three days a week, but she always picked me up from school every day.  She knows a broken arm when she sees one so being the responsible Grandmother she is she rushed me to hospital. When I say rushed, I mean we went home; called my mother and then took the bus to the hospital. This was back in 2000, and my Grandmother didn’t have any money or a car so a bus was the only option. Must’ve been hell in rush hour with a miserable seven year old cradling a sore arm. I must ask her about it one day.

I sat, still wide-eyed and innocent in my red pillar-box school jumper, lolling against my Grandmother’s chest waiting for my mother to come to Mayday’s A&E waiting room. My mother wore pearls and expensive perfume by Cacharel and she worked full time in a doctor’s surgery in Central London. With all these medical professionals in the family you’d think someone would believe me, I wasn’t the kind of child to make things like that up. Although I did once mistake growing pains in my shins for blood clots and I thought I was going to die. (I’d just watched a documentary on TV about people who get blood clots in their legs when flying, and they’d died.)

By 8 o’clock that evening, I was home safe back on Hunter Road with a bright orange plaster cast on my arm, and headed back to school the next day. I remember being interested as to what the secretary would say about my personal diagnosis now and how wrong she was.

So, yeah. When I was seven, I broke my arm. No one believed me, and I didn’t even get a day off school for it.