My Operations: Jawbreaking in High School

My Operations: Jawbreaking in High School

Breaking Away

"Break a Jaw" is written in my autograph programs more than once for the All School Plays in which I was involved back in my junior and senior years of high school. The proper admonition is, of course, "Break a Leg", which theater folk have been wishing each other for ages, as the curtain is about to open, for good luck.

"Break a Jaw" meant something more personal and important for me, in those long ago times treading the high school auditorium's boards along with the other creatives and thespians, because three years earlier I had, in fact, broken my jaw, and so the "leg" in the greeting was replaced with the body part of mine which indeed, had been broken, and pretty badly, during the first stirrings of summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school.

As my freshman year in high school drew to a close, I had been faced with more change during one year than in all the previous fourteen combined. Always a prized student in elementary school and junior high, I was completely discombobulated when confronted with high school. The campus was incredibly large, with not only hundreds of students, but dozens of teachers and adminsitrators roaming the vast hallways. High School included more rigorous physical education classes, stricter class schedules, a far more varied syllabus, and the opportunity, through clubs, groups, sports, arts, and school government, to develop a rich social life.

My first year in high school was racuous, exciting, and interesting beyond belief. The year was 1967 when I first passed through the doors of my first two story school building. The year ended in June of 1968. The times were turbulent for the world and for my emerging mind. My parents had always been very strict, and my exposure to high school elicited the first stirrings of freedom from parental control and supervision. I yearned for this freedom, and felt as if life was opening up for me. Summer held the promise of a rest and realaxing time before I would return to the hallways of higher education as a sophomore, not merely a newbie freshman, but an actual solid citizen of the school.

Each year following the final day of elementary school at Shirpser, where I had attended my first six years of education and where my brother was finishing up his elementary experience in the early summer of 1968, there was a party sponsered by the Parent Teacher Association, of which my mother was a particularly active member. She baked cupcakes and cookies, designed and mimeographed the announcement flyers, and helped to arrange the various individual parties, which were held in the homerooms of the school. My brother's teacher at the time was Mr. Bud Weatherby, in his 30s, one of the few men teachers in the school, and a family friend who had visited our home many times during the previous year. I often helped my mother with her PTA chores and was in the process of carrying some boxes of baked goods up our long driveway to place in the back seat of Mr. Weatherby's new Falcon four door, when I thought I'd try my hand at sitting behind the wheel.

All early teenage boys in America yearn to drive more than anything on Earth. I had been saving my allowance for years, saving to purchase my first car. My father had been "teaching" me to drive by letting me take our 1960 Chevrolet Brookwood station wagon up and down the driveway, forward and backward, a few times a night after he got home from work. The Chevy was the size of a boat, with standard steering. I had not steered the car, however, because my dad restricted me to drive up and down the driveway, since I wouldn't obtain my learner's permit for another year.

I sheepishly opened the door of Mr. Weatherby's Falcon, and slid behind the wheel. In my imagination, I was driving all over town, helping with deliveries, picking up hitchhikers, playing KRLA rock and roll tunes on the radio, and having a great time. I grasped the steering wheel and leaned to my left and right. The car was parked at the curb, but in my mind I was a few hundred miles away.

Suddenly Mr Weatherby opened the right hand door and sat beside me on the smallish bench seat.

"Er, hello. Mr Weatherby." I started to stammer. "I was just pretendin'."

"Why don't you slip her in drive and take this load over to the school", Bud Weatherby calmly proclaimed.

I turned my face toward him. You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather. "B-b-but, Mother wouldn't want me to drive!" I explained with surprise.

"It's okay." Weatherby retorted. "It's only a block and a half away to the school. You'll be ready to drive anyway in a couple of years. Why not start early?"

"Are you sure it's all right?" I questioned, knowing full well that it really shouldn't be all right. Like a kid released in a candy store, I was exuberantly smiling, but perplexed. I was already sitting behind the wheel, feeling like I could in fact drive the small car less than two blocks to the school, a trip I'd made on foot hundreds of times.

"Of course. I'm your brother's teacher, aren't I? I wouldn't let you get in any trouble."

My parents had always told me I was smart. Mother's pet phrase for me was "her little genius." I possessed more intelligence, or so they would have me believe, than most of my schoolmates in the 9th grade. This intelligence should have told me to wait a minute. At least it should have told me to go inside the house and ask my mother if driving the loaded car to Shirpser School was indeed, "all right". This intelligence decided to flee my brain for a few unguarded moments, however, and I beamed like a beacon as Mr. Weatherby began to explain how to start the car. "Here's the keys. Put this one into the ignition slot and fire 'er up."

I accepted the keychain, and did as I was instructed. By now, all common sense had left me. I wanted very badly to drive, and was being given the opportunity. I turned the key in the ignition and the car fired it's four cylinders and hummed to life, almost visibly shaking my sprite frame behind the wheel.

"Release the handbrake here," Weatherby told me, "Engage the gear with this lever." The gear shift was different, but similar enough to that in our family wagon, that I had no trouble at all slipping the car into drive. "Push the gas a little with your right foot." The car slowly began it's trip under the guidance of the clueless youth who could hardly see over the top of the steering wheel.

"Make a Left Here."

In Southern California, summer mornings are bright and still, beautifully showcasing the houses and yards of the neighborhood with long shadows. The gentle purring of the Falcon hardly broke the silence. Nobody came out of any of the houses, including my own, as I maneuvered down the street. Only six houses down from where the car had been parked outside our home, Rose Street bisected the street on which I was "driving". "Make a left here," Weatherby calmly instructed. It was the last bit of calm to be experienced on that warm summer morning.

I'd never turned the Chevy wagon. But I'd seen my dad make turns many times as a passenger, of course. The Chevy had no power steering, so Dad would spin the steering wheel hand over hand for long moments, as the car made it's turns. Dad was short but muscular, and still I could tell that turning the Titanic sized family car was a bit of a chore. I similarly began to turn Weatherby's Falcon as I had seen my dad do in the Chevy, but the Falcon had power steering, and I couldn't "feel" the wheel as I had assumed I would. The wheel quickly spun to the left, and so did the front wheels. I tried to compensate, but didn't really know what I was doing.

The calm direction from Mr. Weatherby seemed to have disappeared. He said nothing, as he grabbed the door handle. The car was swerving all over the place. I'd only been travelling about 10 miles per hour, but a two thousand pound  car is a deadly weapon when it isn't being controlled, and my sense of any control was completely gone as the wheel twisted right and left, and the car did a silly little dance on the corner of our street.

Weaving left and right like a bumper car, the auto slammed against the curb on the corner lot, as Weatherby bailed. He actually opened the right hand door and tumbled out of the car on the grass of the corner house, as the momentum from hitting the curb propelled the car into the concrete steps outside the front door of the corner house.

Crash. In only seconds, but seeming like a slow motion roller coaster ride from hell, the Falcon came to a rest at the steps. We had not been wearing seat belts, which were not ubiquitous back in the late 60s like they are now. My small head kept going when the car came to a halt, and my jaw hit the top of the steering wheel pretty hard. My parents had paid for a lot of dental work in that mouth. I had had my braces removed about four months earlier and might even have been wearing my plastic retainers but for the fact that it was morning and I'd just had breakfast before beginning to load Weatherby's car for the parties at the school.

My mother had heard the commotion from our house, and came running down the street, followed by my little sister and brother. People immediately came out of the door of the house I hit, and similarly, others in the neighborhood began to stream out of their homes. I must have blacked out when the car hit the concrete steps, becuase the next memory I have is lying on the ground on my back, with a circle of concerned faces hovering over my supine form. Soon my mother's familiar face joined them. She was a nervous sort normally, and now was acting very hysterical. Everything happened as if in a bad dream to me. I couldn't feel anything. My tongue kept attempting to discern the shape of my mouth, but I couldn't figure out why my teeth seemed to be so far back in my head.

The impact of the crash had thrown my head into the steering wheel with such force that six of the teeth from my jaw had broken free and had scattered on the ground. My mother, still somewhat hysterical, had collected as many as she could find from the floorboards of the car and from the ground around the crash. I don't know what happended to our family friend Weatherby. I hadn't seen him since he bailed out of the car. My jaw had been forced halfway back into my head. Both sides had snapped, and my bottom teeth, what remained of them anyway, were pushed into my face almost an inch or so.

This was in the days before cell phones and 911. Someone called an ambulance, and soon I could hear the sirens. Somebody explained that I was "in shock". I foolishly remembered what the pages of our school first aid manual had said about shock. I couldn't feel pain, but my tongue "knew" something wasn't right. Mother, brother and sister were horrified. The ambulance driver collected information as I was placed on a gurney and wheeled into the back of one of those old Cadillac ambulances. I experienced the whole episode lying down, still trying to figure out what the inside of my mouth must have looked like.

Father had health coverage with Kaiser Pernanente, one of the very first HMOs. The main hospital was in downtown Los Angeles, about 20 miles away. As I remember, my mother, grasping my dislodged teeth in her fist, rode with me to the hospital. Of course I couldn't speak, and I was still in shock.  I only remember seeing the tops of buildings and trees fly by the windows from my lying position, as I continually tried to trace the lines of my mouth with my tongue. Normally, one can slide his tongue to the tips of his teeth. My teeth seemed to be back where my tongue began. I knew this wasn't pretty. I do remember that thoughts of eventual punishment were swimming around in my brain.

Before the ambulance took off, Mother or someone had probably called Dad at his work. He worked about 20 miles the other way from where we lived, but he got to the hospital almost as soon as did the ambulance. I believe one of the teachers at the elementary school was recruited to stay with my siblings. (I'm sure it wasn't Weatherby.) I don't have lots of clear memories of this experience, but I do clearly remember being "parked" in a hallway, for what seemed like hours, as my parents and the doctors discussed my fate. I counted the dots in the ceiling tiles. I listened to the painful sounds of the hospital. The doctors and my parents must have been close, because I could hear the familiar sounds of what I would call"quarreling" coming from behind some unseen door. The morning became the afternoon, and I remained in the secondary hall, lined up against a wall. As the shock wore off, pain began to course through my head and face. The headache was severe. My tongue still didn't know where to rest inside what was left of my mouth.

The first thing that usually happens medically when someone breaks their jaw is that the teeth are removed, and the jaw wired shut so it can heal. Since I was in an emergency situation in a hospital, this is of course what the doctors were recommending. The "quarrel" I heard, and I could recognize my mother's shrill complaints, was her insistence that nobody remove any more teeth. She even wanted the teeth she had rescued to be reinserted somehow. Her insistence was final. Nobody was going to wire my jaw shut.

As afternoon began to slide into evening, my parents and the doctors emerged from their seemingly hours long consultation, and I was wheeled away down the hallway. Mother and Dad had made a decision. We were going to find a doctor called an "oral surgeon", a relatively new concept, but someone who possbily could fix my jaw without removing my teeth or wiring the jaw shut. Mother explained this to me as the gurney was pushed down into the bowels of the parking structure, where I was "unloaded' into the back seat of our Chevy station wagon.

CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO.