A Separate Peace
When I was two years old, my dad broke his leg. He shattered his femur while skiing. He was in a cast for over six months while it healed. I don't really remember any of this. There are pictures, of course. But it happened when I was so young that it just became a bare fact. Something that had no real impact on me. When I was 14, we read A Separate Peace for school. My dad was excited about the assignment; it's one of the only times I can remember him being excited about a book. It wasn't until I finished it that I understood why. Finny breaks his leg in exactly the same way my dad did. Well my dad had a skiing accident rather than falling out of a tree, but both of them shattered the bone. Unlike my dad, Finny dies from his injury, during complications in the surgery. After I read the book, my dad told me that the whole time he was lying in prep for surgery he was thinking of Finny, terrified he would meet the same fate. This was one of the first tim...