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“The Jews broke my arm”

Aug 4, 2008 by Jared Smith

After church on Sunday, Abbie announced out of the blue that, “The Jews beat me and broke my arm.” Thinking we had misheard what she said, we asked her what she meant. She replied, “The Jews, you know those mean people, they broke my arm.” We inquired a bit more and she confirmed she meant the people that lived when Jesus was alive and she was thoroughly convinced they had broken her arm. When we pushed to get more info, she locked up, started crying, and wouldn’t talk about it any more. The fact we were laughing hysterically probably didn’t help any.

In an attempt to figure out what she had learned in her primary class, we called the mother of Gracie, one of Abbie’s classmates. Gracie was with Abbie when she broke her arm, so we were certain she would know what happened. When Gracie’s mother asked her what they had talked about on Sunday, she replied, “We talked about those bad guys the Jews. They broke Abbie’s arm!”

Nice. Either they are teaching some crazy form of antisemitism at church or these girls really misinterpreted something.

Determined all the more to get to the bottom of it (and partially because it would be a bit awkward for our daughter to announce to strangers that Jews have abused her), we called her primary teacher. During class they were discussing the story of the good Samaritan and the teacher discussed how the Jews and the Samaritans didn’t get along. They then role-played the story and Abbie naturally played the part of the man robbed and abused – who else but the girl with the purple cast to play the one that gets beaten. Somehow they interpreted it all to mean that the Jews had REALLY broken Abbie’s arm. Mystery solved!

Don’t you love it when kids take the craziest things so literally? Now, we need to somehow convince our daughter that Jews aren’t mean child abusers.

Posted in Family, Humor, My Life | 1 Comment »

The iPhone dilemma

Jul 29, 2008 by Jared Smith

Besides determining the physical deformity level of my daughter this week, I also faced another life altering decision – whether to buy an iPhone.

I (that term is loosely interpreted to mean “my wife”) washed my cell phone a few days ago. (Yes, I left it in my pocket, but I blame my moment of carelessness on the fact all of the skin had just been torn from both kneecaps in a softball ‘incident’.) I am 4 months into a two year contract with Verizon and they wanted $320 to replace my phone. I kindly told them they could take my waterlogged phone and cram it up their…

I could either pay the $320 to replace my Samsung Flipshot (I think my feelings about this option are clear), get an el-cheapo, bottom-of-the-line phone for $180 (those ‘free’ phones aren’t when you’re already in a contract), or pay a $150 early termination fee and go somewhere else. I’ve had techno-lust for an iPhone for some time, but I also have been relatively happy with Verizon. I’ve been with them for almost 11 years – since the AirTouch Cellular days. But, the iPhone is friggin’ sexy and I really could use mobile web browsing and e-mail when I’m on the road.

So I made up my mind that I was going to bail on Verizon and get an iPhone, despite the price tag – $200 for the iPhone, plus the $150 to kick Verizon in the balls. So I called Verizon to remove all the extra features from my account until I could officially jump ship. After getting the run-around, I finally ended up with a manager who practically begged me to stay. While I had tried to convince several customer service agents before him that it was in their best interest to do something to make me happy, this guy actually understood that they make more from me in two months in a contract than they would make by pissing me off and taking my $150 cancellation fee. I figure I’ve thrown over $8000 to Verizon thus far.

So Verizon is now going to send me a new (well, reconditioned and “like new”) replacement phone for free and keep me as a relatively happy customer. I’m still likely to bail when my contract is over and get that oh-so-sexy iPhone, but I have to give them props for making things right with me.

Posted in My Life | 4 Comments »

Decisions

Jul 28, 2008 by Jared Smith

Life is full of lots of decisions. For instance, every day of my life I have to decide whether to wear dark blue jeans or light blue jeans, ham and cheese or peanut butter and jelly – you know, those kind of decisions. Today, we had to decide whether to subject our daughter to two surgeries or let her grow up with a crooked arm.

As you can see, purple is the color of choice this week.

When Abbie broke her arm 3 weeks ago, it was VERY crooked. The doctor was able to get things set in place nice and straight, but things have since shifted so there is now a 20 degree angle in the bones in her forearm. It’s not freakish like it was when it first happened, but if you look closely, you can tell it is crooked. If you put your arm in front of you with your palm down, the arm angles upward half way between the wrist and elbow.

Today we spent A LOT of time in the doctors office reviewing our options. We could choose to let it continue to grow as is with the possibility that it would straighten out a bit (it won’t ever be perfectly straight) and that she will maintain good rotation of her arm, or we could choose to have surgery where they would straighten the bones and put them in place with some very expensive hardware (hardware they would have the gall to take away from her a few years later). Of three doctors that advised us, one said to definitely let it heal on it’s own, one said to flip a coin, and one said to definitely do surgery. A lot of good those 2nd opinions were!

It was a VERY difficult decision (and I can assure you that the cost of surgery never even entered our minds), but we decided to keep the cast on and see how it it heals. The risks of surgery outweighed the fact that she will have a slightly crooked arm. Did we make the right decision?

Of course, surgery may still be in her future if she cannot regain good rotation of her arm. None of this will affect movement of the arm itself, but will affect rotation of the arm. With your arm out in front of you with your palm down, rotate your hand so that the palm is now facing up. Notice how the two bones in the forearm rotate around each other. With both bones angled, she may not be able to fully put her palm straight down or straight up, which means she would be a very rotten volleyball player and it will always be “give me 5, on the side” for her. It might also affect her ability to grasp things with her palm down (think riding a bike, doing a pull-up, or pushing the lawnmower).

We’re hoping and praying that after 3 more weeks in the cast and after some therapy that she’ll regain enough motion that it will not affect her long-term. We’ll keep you up-to-date.

Now that this rather depressing post is coming to an end, here’s a video of our kids entertaining themselves.

They do that A LOT! Yes, my children have perfect equilibrium.

Posted in Family, My Life | 3 Comments »