The Nose Knows

 The Nose Knows

    It is strange how little boys seem to have hormones that cause them to laugh at other's misfortune and pain. When a kid takes a bad fall his buddies guffaw as he writhes in pain. Punching eachother was considered good fun and there was even a stupid game where you would fake hitting a pal and if he flinched you called "FLINCH" and punched him in the arm. On the playground education I received the worst thing you could be would be a crybaby or sissy. Deep down I was both but could never give in to that weakness in front of my peers and be stained forever in the male stupidity club. So, this tale concerns my  great friendship with the Whitneys and Bobby who was not only a schoolmate but in High School lived right over our back fence. In this boy dominated family only Bethy Doll was holding out against the testosterone driven behavior, although John and Bob were not mean in any way. John was a studly kid with broad shoulders and a powerful chest. He was handsome in the traditional way with a roman nose that he may have inherited from his Basque blood when the Romans were on the Iberian peninsula for 600 years back in the day (500 AD). Bobby was somewhat like John and possessed some of the Roman profile but was more on the corpulent side. This event took place at the park where we band of brothers tried to amuse ourselves during the glorious Summer vacations of the later 1950's. We were honored to be allowd to play over-the-line with the big kids and Bobby and John were teamed up and favored to win with the big guy's booming bat. In over-the-line we set up over by diamond 3 and a close-by teammate lobbed a toss to the batter who then tried to drive a ball past the infielder for a single or over the outfielder's head for a homer. Typically, the outfielder played very deep with a big fella hitting so John was attempting to drive the ball as hard as possible past an infielder who was a jittery Glen Creason. We played enough to break sweats and breathe in smoggy air when Bobby lofted a cookie to John from about ten feet away. The big boy hitting left-handed ripped one right in the sweet spot and the line drive he blasted travelled those ten feet and hit little brother right on the bridge of his Whitney nose. There was a sound like someone hitting a log with a sledge hammer and John cried out "Oh No!" I ran in toward Bobby who was now prone and a little fountain of blood was spurting out of a wound on his nose. He was out cold and what was a nose was now a flattened bag of mush below his eyes. Somehow, the bad hormones bubbled out when I realized he was not dead and I began to laugh until I was wheezing. After some time John stood brother up, put a t-shirt on the face to staunch the blood and slowly walked him back to their house across the park. Big O cursed the injury as he had been an expensive patient recently and she was not ready to spend more on boy foolishness. They all ended up at St. Francis hospital for a painful packing of the Bob beezer. The windup was that Bobby never had the Roman snoot again and when his two black eyes and flattened nose healed up he had a wide one like a sweet potato that evolved into a standard white guy nose. Big O offered little sympathy but loved her second son and his not Roman nose for the rest of her days.