Cottonwoods and Tiger Lilies
     by Big Blind Dougie Thornton 

Mother wiped my nose, snotty with crying, put iodine tincture on my cheeks where the bleeding had stopped and sent me back outdoors, three bandages on my face and glasses taped up in three places with white roll tape. 
     We neighbourhood kids had been playing tag. There were Norman Schmidt, Ronn Enns, Larry Enns (brother to Ronn), Jolene Toews, Helen Ginter, Gwen Reimer my sister, Lorna Klippenstein my next door neighbor, her sister, Verna, myself and Peter Hiebert. My turn to chase the others came around. After finally tagging someone I’d spend the “escaping” time in frantic action, running here and there in sudden, frequent, short-lived  bursts of determination, like a deranged Amelia Bedelia, repeatedly and irregularly jumping up and down, turning cartwheels and somersaults and sundry other frenetic, affected tumbling feats (enough to make the head spin dizzily for much of the game.)
     Now, at some moment during my "itness,” tearing along for all I was worth, I made a huge error in judgement. I ran headlong and face-first into one of the massive centenary cottonwoods, of which our lawn had four. One second I sped effortlessly along; the next I stood stock still, briefly reflecting on the cause of the change of my momentum before the screaming started. Oh! The pain! My, oh my, the agony accompanying the sudden flattening of the face! The cottonwood’s two-inch thick bark, deeply grooved and  rougher than that of any other tree I know, grinds and flays the skin of the face when it contacts it, especially at a boy’s top speed. I later found my glasses in three pieces nearby. My face needed attention from mom, I knew.  Since I intended to keep playing after going inside for repairs to my face, but didn’t know what to do about the broken specs, I looked around for a safe place, laid them down and promptly forgot the location.
     “Mom! I can’t find my glasses.” Me. I looked so silly at eight, sporting ankles too thin to hold up socks, cowlick, very big ears sticking out at ninety degrees to my head, a pinched expression on my near sightless face, uncertain where to search and whether I’d see them if I did find the right spot. 
     “Where have you looked?” Mom. She knew, of course, how sending me sans eyeglasses to find anything was pointless. I’d wander aimlessly about the yard as only a myopic kid can do who could see nothing without visual aids, mindlessly peering into the rain barrel, climbing the tree to the treehouse because maybe I’d left them there (as if!), intermittently circling the last place that I remembered seeing them, at the scene of the accident and, in between moments if searching, performing a series of cartwheels and handstands to stave off boredom. Soon many of the kids playing tag had returned at our request to help search. Hardly an inch of the yard remained unscrutinized. But nothing. And then a cry went up from Gwen that she’d found them.
     “Where were they!” Mom, her hand on my upper arm, pinching hard enough to keep me at attention. 
     “Mom! That hurts!” I hadn't yet learned the desire of the frustrated parent needing to exact some small gesture of revenge at the sort of unnecessary distraction I’d mindlessly forced on her. 
     “Under the tiger lily.” Gwen. At 6 years old she found all the eyes on her exciting. Jumping up and down she called it out in a clear, high voice. Mom, of course, needed to hear it again. Gwen led the whole bunch of us to the edge of the garden, lifted the branches and leaves and pointed to the exact spot. It all seemed so stupid now, knowing that I’d done such a pathetic thing. Emblematic. A foretaste of many, many other times in decades to come when I grovel and slink because I’ve broken something I shouldn’t even have touched, been found out at one of my various transgressions, been unluckily unable to state my disagreement clearly when someone follows a religious opinion with “Right?”, or been accused by someone of ignoring important boundaries (having thought I was not being observed). Ah, humanity. Ah, humanity!