Broken, really broken arm

It was my father's birthday over the weekend. He and my mother had birthdays within four days of each other. He's probably enjoying all that missionary work in the hereafter.

Anyhow, I want to tell the story of the ten-year-old Louis (my father) when he broke his arm. This is a medical story of old Holland.

He broke his arm. The doctor set it and put it in a cast. He wore the cast for six weeks. The doctor took it off. Louis was "healed."

But on the playground at school, he had pain when he hung from the monkey bars and his gym teacher looked at his arm, which was crooked, and said, "Your arm isn't set right; you need to go back to the doctor."

So Louis and his mother returned to the doctor. The doctor examined it and said, "You're right, it needs to be reset."

Without warning, the doctor took Louis's arm and broke it over his knee much to the consternation of Louis and his mother.

The first time I heard this story is when Dad took us bowling to the after-midnight special at the

North Temple bowling alley. I was ten or eleven. Dad couldn't bowl straight and he told us the story of his arm. In fact his arm curved slightly beneath the elbow. We kids shuddered to hear it.

So if God said to my father, "You can go back and repeat your life over again," I think he would say "No thanks."

Same here. I'd have to go to Chuckie Cheeses again and sit through a three hour program of the Minnesota Symphony playing Holst's The Planets.

What is it you wouldn't care to repeat?