God Almighty

Last night we sat around the dinner table and regaled my oldest son's girlfriend with tales of injuries past. Not that our family is accident prone or anything. But our family god is a jealous god and demands sacrifice. For some time he has taken his due on at least an annual basis. I declare that our family deity is the Bone God and he is our one true god. We can miss church meetings. We can miss our prayers. Our god doesn't demand temple worship, tithing, the sacrifice of children or virgins. But he does require a bone to be sacrificed each year to slake his hunger. He's not picky. It doesn't have to be a previously unbroken bone. So we've sometimes gotten by with doing the same bone multiple times. Don't believe me?

• 1968: Broke my leg playing Batman when I jumped off the car bumper.
• 1975: Broke my thumb playing flag football
• 1993: 5-year-old son falls out of tree on Christmas day and breaks two bones in arm
  
• 1994: 4-year-old son has tibia snapped like a tree branch by his pre-K teacher.
• 1995: 7-year-old son breaks both bones in other arm in bicycle accident that required general anesthesia to set
  
• 1996: Exploded my left collar bone racing
• 1997: Son breaks rib in bicycle accident
  
• 1999: I break right collar bone in another racing crash
• 2000: Sons breaks two bones in his arm. Again.
• 2001: I break two ribs in a motocross crash
• 2002: Daughter cracks elbow wrestling with dogs
  
• 2003: I break my left collar bone again. Doctor asks if I knew that I'd broken two ribs. Duh.
  
• 2004: Son breaks shoulder in three places: shoulder blade cracked in half, acromium process cracked but not displaced, and collar bone. Two weeks before state 5A marching band finals where he marched with one arm and took second place.
  
• 2005: Nothing? Last year's 3 carried over?
  
• 2006: Son breaks his other collar bone. We got the sacrifice out of the way early this year so we're safe until 2007.

As you can see, our god is a demanding god who demands his pay.

Funny, but true, story. One of my daughter's classes did a survey on the number of broken bones in each students' family that they charted on a histogram. Our family, at that time, had more broken bones than the rest of the class combined. And we've increased the total several times since then.