During the first phase of lockdown, I managed to break my arm while trying to keep socially distanced on a busy footpath. It was a clean break to my forearm, just below the elbow — no splint, no surgery, no complications. I was lucky. Earlier this year, my GP tripped on a tree root and broke her elbow into multiple pieces. It involved surgery, a lot of metalware and months of recuperation. Breaking your arm can mean a lot of different things.
Not long after my fall, I was walking with a friend and her three-year-old who was curious about my broken arm. Since we were in-situ out in the street, I demonstrated the tripping over and landing on my arm. I may have been more restrained if I’d realised that his parents would be watching their lad re-enact this for the next two weeks.
My friend sent me a one minute video of her little boy in his scooter helmet telling the story three times over. Initially the narration is hesitant, ‘I walk along the road… And what happened?’ It gathers force as he demonstrates the moment of tripping, bumping his gumboots decisively at the gutter edge. Then, as if he is taking a bow, he bends at the waist and lowers his helmeted head gently to the asphalt footpath — this moment in the re-enactment lends a dignity to my stumbling face-plant. After the bow the little fellow stands up and with a triumphant flourish extends his arm, pronouncing with great finality ‘I broke my arm!’ He flinches and holds it close, ‘OUCH!’
I felt honoured that this three-year-old took hold of the story so strongly. The quality of his attention was mesmerising to watch. As a colleague observed, it was a ‘beautiful example of how children work through disturbances in their lives until they integrate whatever the learning is.’
The three-year-old’s mother tells me that storytelling is becoming something of a rite of passage for her boy. Recently, after an episode involving a series of tantrums, he asked her, ‘What happened?’ She realised this was an invitation to telling about the episode and attempting to get a handle on it. In a continuation of this, when her son recently had a mishap on his scooter, she consoled him with telling how he had crashed when he bumped into a big stick. The story told, he was emboldened to get back on