Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast:  https://youtu.be/NQ9TX3MTXRo

or read the story below…

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Life, actually…

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COMFORT AND JOY AND A LIFELONG SCAR

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Dr. Ruby Tyler is leaning over me while I lie flat on my back in her examination room.

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This is way back in time in Tuscaloosa when I am a kid who just fell out of a tree, a kid who at this moment is Dr. Tyler’s sole emergency patient.

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I have never been an emergency patient before, so fear and trembling infuse my soul. I am hysterical and refrain from gazing at the gape in my right arm. I am certain that all the blood  in my body will exit onto the sheets. I am sure to die an embarrassing death after my playmates-witnessed fall from grace.

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Dr. Tyler doesn’t blink. She calmly glances at the wound. She places her hand on my shoulder and calms me down. I can stop screaming now. All will be well. Comfort and peace sooth me and the rest of the morning goes pretty well.

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Dr. Tyler stitches me up, no anesthetic employed back then, and I dissolve into the role of helpless victim and happily healing patient.

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There are perks to being wounded in public. The little girl across the street brings me flowers, fellow playground buddies delight in recounting events leading up to my accident, neighbors check my wound and count the stitches.

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I can milk this incident for a few days by dramatically displaying an arm resting in its red bandanna sling.

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Like everything else in life, other anecdotes reveal themselves. Bob Crutchfield reminds me that I landed upon him, not on the red clay dirt. Lenny Fulmer notes that I also scraped my back against the barbed wire fence next to Bob Crutchfield. Brother Ronny notes that the wooden planks forming a crude ladder on the tree trunk actually broke, causing my rapid descent. It’s a group participation thing, this episode of mine.

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Anyhow, to this day I sport a scar that is no longer visible among the surrounding wrinkles and sags and discolorations that have become my ancient body.

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But I do get something useful out of this split second in time. I learn it only takes a calming gesture to settle down a frightened creature. I learn that every victim is part of a posse of people who have their own individual mini-traumas. I learn that life is not all about me myself and I.

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I am a participant in your pain just as you are involved with mine. I can choose to ignore this fact or I can become part of the healing and nurturing team. I get that.

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On my better days I actually rise above whines and complaints. I actually try to become part of a solution. I transform into the role of splint or bandage or clumsy comforter. Or just a friend close by who is comrade to a crisis

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© 2026 A.D. by Jim Reed