Told You So!!

In January, 1998 I had knee surgery.  I had both knees replaced with artificial ones.  The cartilage in both knees had simply worn away.  The bones were rubbing against bone, and  it was extremely painful.  I was told that it would not get better and was urged by my physician to have the surgery.  My mother would have said, "I told you so!" had she known.  She lectured me about exposing my knees to the cold and was certain that I would "catch cold in them" and would eventually have rheumatic fever in them and they would be ruined beyond repair.  I would never have convinced her that my early behavior had not led to the eventual deterioration of my knees at age 70.

When  my sisters and I were growing up in frigid Wichita we wore long white underwear, the kind that had a trap door over the buttocks that buttoned shut.  This was long before children's tights were invented, and slacks or other long pants were not worn by little girls.  Over the underwear we wore a harness to keep our stockings up.  The harness was made of heavy cotton tape and was a horror to get on.  It had four little silver fasteners, called supporters,  that hung down over our legs, two in front and two in back.  We wore long, brown, cotton lisle stockings which we had to pull up over the long underwear and fasten into the little supporters.   Getting this all together was a long and difficult process.  The underwear bunched up under the stockings, and it was impossible to make it smooth.  Mornings in our little house were cold; there was heat only in the front room, where we had a coal stove.  We used to take our underwear, harnesses and stockings into the front room and put them on while huddled behind the stove. But we dutifully went through the struggle, morning after morning. 

I absolutely hated it.  My legs were so lumpy with the underwear bunched up under the stockings that I looked like an old woman with varicose veins. The very minute I was out the door on the way to school, and far enough away  that  Mother couldn't see me from the window, I pulled up my dress, reached down and unfastened my supporters and rolled my stockings down.  Then I rolled my underwear up, high as it would go.  It wasn't pretty, but better than the brown lumpy legs.  I then walked to school bare-legged.  Of course Mother found out.  My stinky sisters told on me, and I believe that a teacher occasionally apprised her that I was exposing my legs to the cold.  I was scolded and given those awful predictions about rheumatic fever and the eventual demise of my knees.  I did not heed the warnings and continued to bare my knees to the bitter Kansas cold for as long as I was forced to wear those awful clothes.  Though she didn't live to see the demise of my knees, I can hear Mother saying "I told you so. You just never learned to listen to me, Maxie."  It is certain that the cold weather had nothing to do with the cartilage in my knees wearing out, but you'd never convince my mother of that.