There are a few pretty cool things you can do as a kid, and one of them is breaking a bone. All the better if you get a cast for your efforts. See that innocent looking swing set in the picture? It’s the reason I broke my left wrist when I was 10 years old. Why was it a good thing? Because it could have been my head.

The accident took place one Friday night when my parents were out grocery shopping. It’s the one time of the week they could get away from us kids for an hour or so. All they had to do was let an older sibling take charge and make sure nothing bad happened while they were gone.

As soon as they left, something bad happened.

It was wintertime and a blanket of snow covered the backyard hill. An excellent place to take the sleds out for a spin. We never settled for sledding on mere snow. We insisted the best way to experience high-octane thrills was to throw buckets of water down the hill to form a nice sheen and add 30 mph to our speed. Kids, don’t try this at home.

Sister Ann and I prepped the death slope with about six or seven good bucket tosses and waited until it froze up good. We grabbed our sleds and set off to fly down the hill with the greatest of ease. Until….

I sat down on my trusty wooden Flexible Flyer at the precipice of our freshly-made, glassy goodness and gave myself a mighty heave-ho. Heading straight down the middle, I must have leaned too far to the right and began to veer directly toward the left legs of the swing set. In a flash, I’m thinking I either stay put and crack my skull open when I hit that thing, or make quick work of leaning the other way to shoot toward the middle of the hill.

There is a 10 foot open swath between the swing set and an old rusty laundry pole. I’m shooting for left of the swing set, but overcompensate and now I’m heading straight for the pole. I’m back to square one in the skull-saving, decision-making department. Do I split my noggin on the pole? Or do I try and brace myself with my arm and break that instead?

I opted to save the skull and stick my arm out to protect my face and head. My hand hit the pole and snapped all the way back as the rest of my body followed behind and landed in a rumpled heap at the bottom of the hill. I saved the skull, but my wrist doesn’t feel too good. Not good at all.

I can’t remember who came running first or how I got back up to the house. I’m sure I was blubbering like an idiot and screaming how "Mom and Dad are going to kill me!!!" They apparently can’t go anywhere without some trauma befalling us kids. But at least we never set fire to anything.

Once in the house, I’m sobbing on the couch and my brainiac brother Michael is yelling at me.

"It’s not broken if you can move it. Here. Let me see."

He flops my hand back and forth, over and over.

"Oww!! OWW!! Oh my God, OWWWWW!!!"

"OK. Yeah, it might be broken."

"Idiot."

So we wait until Mom and Dad come home from the store and then promptly announce that now they have to take me to the hospital. The one thing that made our accidents so much more bearable was that the hospital was located only a block away. I wonder of Mom and Dad, knowing they’d someday have a houseful of imbecilic kids, told their real estate agent "We need a house next to a state-of-the-art hospital with a band of qualified ER doctors. We’re going to be spending some time there. Can you do that?"

As we trek over to the hospital, I’m getting really angry. Not because I broke my wrist. And not because I got in trouble for sledding in the dark on an ice-encrusted hill. It’s because now I was going to miss the Brady Bunch. Back in the day before VCRs and DVRs, you absolutely needed to be planted in front of the TV when your favorite show came on or you would miss it forever.

As I sat in the ER waiting room, I watched as it approached 8:00 and then 8:30 and then 9:00. I mourned the loss of getting to watch the fanciful antics of my beloved Brady Bunch kids. The only bright spot was knowing that none of the Bradys ever broke a bone and they don’t get a cast and they can’t show it off to their friends at school. So there, take that!

Here’s a lesson for the kiddies — if you have a choice between breaking your skull and breaking a bone, go for the bone. Brain is so much more worth keeping in good working order. Besides, having a cast on your head is just not as attractive.

Stumble it!