Attitude towards injury

I think one of the stories that best describes my father's attitude toward injuries came about when I was 6 years old. It was the day of my sister's 5th birthday, so we even have a video of the event.
My friends and I used to ride our bikes around the neighborhood, and there was a certain field close to my house that had a bike jump on the edge of it. I had never really tried to get air off the jump before, although I had ridden over it just for fun. On this occasion, however, I wanted to show off for the video camera.
So I rode towards the jump as fast as my little legs could get me moving. Just as I came off the jump, my feet fell off the pedals and my legs flew out to the side. I crashed pretty bad, and had dirt all over my nice dress-up shirt and up my nose and everything. Instead of rushing over to comfort his 5-year-old, my dad came trotting over, helped me up, and immediately started telling me what I did wrong. Just before the video fades to the next scene you can hear him saying "You just have to keep your feet on the pedals!" as I rode toward the jump again.

1 - 2 - 3 RUN!!!!

This game didn't have any sort of official name, but since its premise is much like the aforementioned "Chop 'er Down," I thought I'd tell about it. Basically my dad would pick up one of the huge brown pillows and then he'd say "You'd better RUN!" So Ashley and/or I would take off down the hallway running at full speed. My dad would throw a pillow low to the ground at top speed, and if we weren't able to dodge into one of the doors at the end of the hallway in time... Well, let's just say it wasn't pretty. Most of the hits would glance off us and just cause us to trip up as we launched ourselves through doors. Direct hits were infrequent, but occasionally caused some trouble as one of us ran headlong into the door at the end of the hallway.
This game taught us valuable life skills like dodging flying objects and crashing with finesse. If only they taught these principles in schools...

Crutches

I got access to my first pair of crutches in the first grade. I don't remember thinking of them as an inconvenience, except that I had to have one of my classmates carry my lunchbox. And I was always slightly scared on the stairs that I was going to try to go down one step and end up going down twenty instead. That fear was realized at least once later in life, but that's a different story.
The injury was caused by a fishing accident. I was fishing on a dock with my dad, and there was about 8 feet of water between the dock and the shore. I really had to pee and didn't want to get wet, and my dad didn't want to get in the boat to take me to shore. So he picked me up and said "One ... Two ..... THREE" while I screamed "NOOoooooooo!!!!!!!!!!" I found myself flying through the air towards the shore, and since I hadn't as yet developed my tuck-and-roll crash technique, I ended up with a sprained ankle. I'm sure that the lack of ankle support in the sloppy rubber galoshes I was wearing didn't help. But really the problem was that I wasn't experienced enough in the art of landing lightly after flying through the air. I now consider this art one of my finest talents, one I'm sure I wouldn't have developed without my father's constant lessons.

Chop 'er Down

One of Ashley and my favorite games growing up was one my dad called Chop 'er Down. I'm sure it was one of those games that was already our favorite game before my mom was able to find out about it. This game, as with other games we played growing up, revolved around the use of two giant brown pillows that came from our hideous brown couch we ended up selling to a blind woman sans pillows. Basically, my sister and I would jump up and down on my parents bed while avoiding the pillow axe my father was swinging back and forth at ankle level.
Of course our favorite part was when we actually got "chopped down," which meant our legs flying out from under us, and sometimes our whole body getting flipped upside down. Most landings ended softly on the bed, but occasionally we would tumble off onto the floor. It was only when we got tall enough that we fell off the bed and ran into various bedroom furniture consistently that my mom was able to convince the rest of us that the game may be past its prime.