Junior high was a time for rites of passage and awkwardness — braces, makeup, first kisses, first dances, first clothes that weren’t uniforms (if you were me).
One of the rites was having a cast. Coming to school with a broken arm, and a story, pronounced a level of bravery and badassery that few thirteen year olds could achieve. What I would have given to break my foot in junior high! Lament, lament. A hot pink cast would have provided me with a (completely valid) excuse to ask my crush-of-the-minute to sign my arm, hopefully writing something I could vaguely construe as romantic. I would have been granted the coveted ability to leave class ten minutes early, as well as the equally coveted option to choose a partner to accompany me and carry my books. The extra ten minutes served to guarantee a willing participant for your packmule duties and also made you immensely popular. Added bonus, your mom made you food of your choosing because “Ow! It hurts.”
All this to say, I would not have chosen to get my first cast at 26. As adults, we are definitely less tolerant of discomfort and painfully aware that self-sufficiency isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Also, homesickness is exponentially worse when one is sick or injured.
