Doctor, Doctor, Will I Die?

In a moment of self-disclosure, I once told a class about a devout childhood prayer of mine. I prayed it every night for maybe a year. Not wanting to appear self-seeking, I’d say the regular bedtime litany first, asking God to bless my parents and sisters and brothers and all the children around the world who had nothing to eat. But with that out of the way, I’d turn to begging.

“Please, please, please,” I’d implore with my eyes squeezed tight, “before my childhood ends, help someone invent a jump-rope turning machine.”

Jump rope was my sport. Too short to make a basket and too light to swing a bat, I was always chosen last for those teams. But with jump rope, I had the chance to be a star—to skip hot peppers faster than the brawny kids and to catch them in jump-rope tag and to beat them by jumping to higher numbers during the jump-rope jingles.

I loved jumping rope, so much that when I wasn’t jumping, I often dreamed I was.

But I had a problem. It was hard to convince my brothers to stop riding bikes and shooting baskets and come turn ropes. And my sisters were too young to turn steady or fast. If I only had a jump-rope turning machine.

Back then, I didn’t understand my passion for jumping. I didn’t know that jumping increased my feel-good hormones and pumped oxygen through my brain and acted as a metronome to develop my coordination. I only knew that, after jumping, the world felt right, and that fears of riots and kidnappings and communists coming and the world ending were less likely to creep into bed with me.

Not last night but the night before,
24 robbers came to the door.
As I ran out,
They ran in
How many policemen came around?
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 . . .

Mother, mother, I am sick.
Call the doctor, quick, quick, quick.
Doctor, doctor, will I die?
Yes, my child, but don’t you cry.
How many folks will bury me?
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 . . .

As we chanted about violence and death in the circle of the rope, life seemed less dire.

My prayers about the turning machine went unanswered. But several years after I told my class about those nightly pleas, a former student stopped by after school. She was waving a newspaper clipping.

“They did it, Mrs. Swartz,” she said. “They invented a rope-turning machine.”

She handed me the advertisement.

“They missed your childhood by a bit,” she said. “But still, you could buy it.”

She threw me an impudent smile and left me standing there, holding the tardy ad.