So, my boy Evan broke his first bone last weekend.

I’m so proud.

Really, I am.

We’d been skateboarding, practicing slalom runs in a large, local parking lot with a gentle slope and a fresh coat of asphalt (I’ll not say which one, I hope to keep using it). After he traded the faster slalom deck for his street board, I took the wrist guards to take a few slalom runs myself. We each had all other protective gear, but only one set of wrist guards between us.

Don’t I feel like a heel! Minutes later, a skid threw Evan off his board, and he was stricken with a case of Sudden Deceleration Syndrome, landing hand first on the asphalt.

He took it very well. Tears were few and quickly shed. He kept his cool.

“I think I broke it,” he said, cradling his right arm in his left. “Get my board.”

We gathered up our gear, and decided together to swing home for some ice packs before heading to the hospital for x-rays. I wasn’t sure his arm was broken, but having seen the fall, I knew it could be. Evan knew it. It didn’t hurt all that much, he said later, but it hurt in an unfamiliar way, not at all like the usual abrasions.

The good folks at Southern New Hampshire confirmed Evan’s diagnosis – he’d broken the radius, but not the ulna –  and wrapped his arm with a splint till the swelling subsided. He got his cast today, green with a blue stripe.

I have a saying (I’m fond of sayings): if you don’t break something every once in a while, you’re not trying hard enough.

Sometimes I say, “if you don’t fall down every once in a while….” Same idea.

There’s a real idea behind it (life is full of chances, and some are worth taking), but I’m kidding about breaking bones. I think Evan knows that. I hope so. He starts skate camp next week.

Here’s Ev BBB (before broken bone):

http://blogs.nashuatelegraph.com/off_track/resource/general/IMG_0214.jpg/