Yep.

Broke my right wrist and sprained my left wrist.

Back around the end of June in ’82 my father had borrowed a pickup truck with a camper in the bed from one of his buddies at 447 Sqn. so that he and his new wife, my stepmother, could go to Banff for their honeymoon.

They had no intention of taking Scott and I with them. We got unceremoniously dropped of with out mother in Calgary, AB. Yeah, the same mother that he told Alberta Social Services that had abandoned the family and that the same mother that he had told Alberta Social Services that he had no idea of how to contact.

When Richard and Sue were finished with their honeymoon they swung back through Calgary to pick Scott and I up. We drove back up to CFB Griesbach in Edmonton.

The truck was parked on the street in front of the PMQ.

Richard had gone somewhere and it was just Sue at home.

Scott got on top of the camper and stuffed the vents with leaves.

Just before Richard was due home Scott found me and told me that Richard was going to be pissed off with me for “me” having put the leaves into the vent on the camper.

I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, so I went to check out the camper.

I looked at the camper from the outside and I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about, but once I opened the back door and climbed inside the camper I saw what he was talking about. The wind-up vent was plugged full of leaves. There was no way that Richard wasn’t going to notice this.

So, up on the roof I went.

Tim’s truck was a raised 4X4 with proper off road tires. With the camper on the back the roof had to be about 3 metres off the ground.

I got all of the leaves cleared out. It was spick and span.

I went to climb down the ladder and I lost my footing.

I landed on the ground flat on my back.

I had the wind knocked out of me and all I could see was stars.

It took so much effort to start to breathe again.

One of the locals came over and helped me up and walked me back to the PMQ where Sue was.

Sue sent me up to my room with the warning that Richard was not going to be happy when he got home.

When Richard got home he was none too pleased to find what had happened. The fact that I did something stupid that could get him in trouble with his commanding officer showed that I didn’t care about his military career.

The fact that I allowed Scott out of my sight meant that Scott could have fallen off the roof of the camper.

The fact that I wasn’t responsible enough to look after my brother meant thatI should take this as a lesson and learn from this.

My left wrist was burning. My right hand was swollen, numb, and immovable. But neither were anything compared to the headache and vomiting.

My father gave me some of his 222s to help me sleep.

Two days went by and then he took me to the Charles Camsell hospital in Edmonton to get my wrists looked at.

That’s when it was discovered that I wasn’t faking anything.

A couple of the larger bones in my right wrist were fractured. My left wrist had hairline fractures and was sprained.

The headaches and the vomiting had stopped by this point so I don’t think that Richard had mentioned anything to the doctors.

I can’t remember what Richard told the doctors, but I know he didn’t mention anything about falling off campers.

My left wrist got wrapped in a tensor. My right arm was set in a cast.

Did you know that it’s almost impossible to wipe your own ass when your dominant hand is set in an arm cast? My left arm wasn’t much use either. Hairlines are really super sensitive to force.

I wasn’t Sue’s kid, so that was out of the question. After Richard and Sue got married Sue wasted no time in telling Scott and I that we were to address her as Sue only that we were never to call her “mom” or refer to her as our “mother”. So yeah, wiping my ass wasn’t on her list of agreed upon tasks.

Richard only kept my brother and I because “it was cheaper than paying child support”. Wiping my ass was not very high on his list of priorities.

And as much as I feared my grandmother, she had moved out of the PMQ back in the spring of 1981. Walking from the PMQ at 10215 – 138 Ave over to my grandmother’s apartment at 10611 – 111th St. to get my butt wiped wasn’t in the cards.

Many creative ways were tried and tested to wipe my ass that didn’t involve using my hands.

The cast was only supposed to stay on my right arm for six weeks, but it ended up staying on for the entire summer as Richard insisted that this was the best way to teach me to not fuck around.