Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday. Yeah, yeah, I know everyone loves Thanksgiving because of the turkey and stuffing and everything else there is to eat. Maybe you’re thinking ‘Big deal, it’s all about visiting with relatives and that’s so boring.’ Except for me it’s different, way different. For me, Thanksgiving isn’t just a holiday in the U.S.A. It’s also when we celebrate my birthday. This year my birthday is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and I’ll be fifteen years old. That’s way cool! 

Now some of you are thinking that I’d be upset because maybe I wouldn’t get a real birthday party because everyone would be paying more attention to the holiday and turkey and all the food that goes with it instead of my birthday. If you think that, you’re wrong. See, I get two birthday parties.

I have a big family. Four grandparents. Lots of aunts and uncles, and tons of cousins. Then there are my folks, two younger sisters, one older brother, and me, and the six of us live in a huge old house that my great-grandfather built a long time ago. It’s lots bigger than the houses of any of our relatives. That’s the reason we always have the family Thanksgiving dinner at our house. And we have a birthday party for me on Thanksgiving after everyone recovers from eating too much turkey dinner. We always have a birthday cake and ice cream. That birthday cake is three huge sheet cakes because there are at least 45 or 50 people and everyone loves cake. Oh, and ice cream, too. A couple gallons of ice cream, in lots of flavors including my favorite, butterscotch marble. Oh my god, that’s so good! Anyway, that’s my first birthday party.

You jealous yet? No? Well, then how about this. On the last Saturday of November I have a birthday party so I can invite my friends. It’s always after my real birthday, but that’s okay with me. We always do something fun like going to the amusement park to ride roller coasters if it isn’t raining, and if it is there’s other neat stuff like go-cart racing, paintball wars, go to a movie, stuff like that.  Then we come back to our house for burgers and everything that goes with them, followed by birthday cake and ice cream. That’s my second birthday party.

So, it’s just before six p.m. on my birthday, Wednesday the 24th of November. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and some of our relatives who have to travel or like to come over the night before to visit have arrived already. That includes my Uncle Phil and Aunt Mary. Other than my folks, Uncle Phil is the adult who I like the best. He’s funny and fun, and always has lots of stories about weird stuff that happens in the hospital where he works. He’s an emergency room doctor, so he sees all these things up close. Some of it is gory, but hey, I’m fifteen now and hearing about gory stuff is fun.

Anyway, most everyone is in the living room sitting or standing around and talking. I’m talking to my cousin Rebecca. She likes to tell jokes like her dad, that’s Uncle Phil. Her jokes are sillier than his because she’s only nine years old, but they’re still funny. I saw Uncle Phil wave and call my name. He was grinning, so I knew what was coming.

“How’s the birthday boy?”

“Great, fantastic, amazing, perfect. As usual, of course.”

“Let me think. This must be your what, thirteenth birthday? Wow, thirteen; that’s a very important birthday, a milestone. You’re finally going to be a teenager! You must be very excited.” He grinned.

“No, Uncle Phil. This is my fifteenth birthday, and you ought to know that. I was thirteen last year. You were here last Thanksgiving when I had my fourteenth birthday. I’ve been fourteen for this whole past year. And, I’ve been a teenager ever since I was thirteen.”

“So you’re fifteen?” He shook his head, and looked at me sadly. “Oh, that’s too bad. I guess that means it’s not going to be a very important birthday. Sounds to me like maybe you could just skip it, ‘eh?”

I pouted on purpose, sticking my bottom lip over my top lip and puffing it out. “Well, it’s very important to me. How’m I gonna get presents if I skip my fifteenth birthday? Skipping it sounds like a really, really bad idea to me.”

Then he pouted just like I did, complete with the bottom lip thing, and I started laughing, and he laughed with me. This is pretty much the same kind of conversation I always have with Uncle Phil on my birthdays. He likes to pretend that I’m older or younger than I really am, and he always has some silly and funny reasons why I should skip my birthday.

He pulled out his car keys and shook them so they jingled. “Well, birthday boy, there’s something in the back of my SUV I need. Why don’t you go out and open the tailgate and bring me the big gift-wrapped box you’ll find there. And be sure to close and lock the tailgate!”

“Sure!” I took his keys and hurried to the front door. I didn’t run, just sort of walked fast. Someone might say real fast, but I say I sort of hurried, just a bit. My dad stood near the entry hall talking to Uncle Stan, and he saw me hurrying.

“David Dempsey! No running in the house!”

“Sorry, Dad!”

I slowed down, to a walk. I’d have done that anyway so I could stop and open the front door. I was excited. I knew the package was a birthday present for me. I loved Uncle Phil’s birthday presents. They were always something fun and strange, something no one else would ever think to get me. As soon as I got out of the house I started running again, down the walk from our porch to the street, to Uncle Phil’s metallic green SUV parked right in front of our house. Just as I got to the sidewalk I heard someone real close by shout, “Look out!”

SMASH!

I found myself lying on my back, with someone on top of me, on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street.

“Ooof!”

“Owww!”

The ‘Ooof’ was from me. The ‘Owww’ came from the someone on top of me. I was a little dizzy, but my vision cleared and I saw a kid’s face, right in front of mine, almost nose to nose, and he looked about my age.

I tried to move and found I couldn’t. “Uh, can you get off me? Please?”

“Uh, yeah, OW! My arm’s caught under you and it hurts a lot. Can you lift up a bit?”

“Okay.” I started to roll to my right.

“Ow! OWW! Roll the other way! Please!”

“Sorry.” I turned to my left, and that lifted my right arm and side so the guy was able to pull his left arm out from under me.

“Oh, it hurts!” He rolled off of me onto his back, holding his left arm against his chest.

I looked up and saw Uncle Phil run of the house. He must have heard us when we yelled. When he got to me he knelt on the ground, his eyes focused on me.

“David, are you okay? What happened?”

“Yeah, I think so. I ran to your car and this other kid was running and we sort of smashed into each other.”

I sat up and looked to my left. “He might have something wrong with his arm. He said it hurts a lot.”

Uncle Phil scooted over to where the other kid was lying to my right, near the curb, holding his arm.

“Hi. I'm Doctor Phillip Dempsey, David's uncle. Everyone calls me Uncle Phil, so that’s what you can call me. What’s your name?”

“Carson Evans.”

“Carson, David said your arm hurts. Which arm?”

“Left.”

“On a scale of one to five, where five is the worst, how does your arm feel right now?”

“A three, that’s how it’s hurting right now ’cause I’m not moving it. When it was under…” Carson turned his head and looked at me, “uh… David?” and I nodded, “…when it was under David it was a five. When I move it now it’s a four or a five depending on how I move it.”

“Carson, I’m going to spend a few minutes checking to make sure you have no injuries other than your arm.” He spent some time asking Carson questions and poking and prodding him.

“Okay, let’s move you up to the porch were we can sit down, and I’ll check your arm.” Uncle Phil helped Carson get up, and led him to our front porch. They sat down on the bench that was under the porch light, and I leaned against the railing across from them.

“Okay, I’m going to feel your arm, and I’ll be gentle but it might hurt. Each time it hurts let me know.”

Carson looked at Uncle Phil and nodded. I could see he was gritting his teeth at the beginning. But Uncle Phil was gentle like he said he’d be, and he asked Carson if it hurt each time he prodded it and Carson said either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and didn’t moan or yell out or anything.

“Carson, I think you might have a muscle strain or a pulled tendon. However, it’s also possible that you have a fracture. You need to have an x-ray to make sure. If it is a hairline fracture you’ll need a brace on your arm. If it is a more serious break you’ll need a cast. If it is just a strain or pulled tendon it’ll improve on its own, but we’ll wrap it in an elastic compression bandage and you can take an over-the-counter pain reliever like Ibuprofen when you need it for pain. I’d like to talk to your parents and give them my diagnosis and recommendations, and contact your family doctor to update him.”

“I don’t have any parents, or a family doctor. I’m living at Hathaway House while they try to find a new foster family for me.” ‘Whoa,’ I thought, Carson’s a foster kid.

“Okay. I’d need to phone them to let them know where you are, what happened, and that you need to have your arm x-rayed and treated. Who should I call?”

Carson reached into his shirt pocket with his right hand and pulled out a card. “This has the phone number of Hathaway House and Mr. Hagen’s name. He’s the director. If he’s not there I guess you could tell anyone who answers the phone.”

“I’m going to go in and make the call. Would you like to come inside, or are you alright here?”

“Here’s okay.”

I watched Carson and he looked sad. His story sure got my attention. Mom says I wear my heart on my sleeve and that means that I get emotional about sad stuff. I think it means that I’m empathetic, which the dictionary says means I can understand the feelings of others. Hey, stop grinning! I know a lot of big words and what they mean.

Anyway, I felt sad about Carson not having any parents and being in foster care. No kid should have to go through that. I read stories about foster kids in the newspaper, and there was a special on TV. Being a foster kid can suck big time. I wondered what happened, but that was personal and I knew it probably wasn’t something I should ask about.

I went over and sat on the bench next to him, on his right side so I wouldn’t accidentally bump his bad arm.

“I guess you know that my name’s David, like I know that your name’s Carson. I’m really sorry for running into you and knocking you down.”

Carson looked surprised, and maybe a little confused. “You didn’t run into me. I ran into you and knocked you down and ended up on top of you. Are you okay? I would’a thought you’d have been hurt by being slammed into the ground.”

“Nah, I’m fine, nothing hurts. It was grass so it wasn’t hard like the sidewalk would have been. But if I hadn’t been running to get something from my uncle’s car we wouldn’t have crashed into each other. Maybe we should say that we’re both at fault. Or that it’s no-fault like in a car accident, okay?” I smiled.

Carson smiled too, the first time I’d seen him smile. “Okay. Cool. It’s no-fault. Sort of makes us like bump brothers, right?”

I laughed, then so did he. I realized that I liked him. He seemed like a really nice guy.