Precisely where my love of casts spawned is still a mystery to me. I do have some recollection of being told by my mother to be careful while playing because if I wasn't and I broke a bone, I'd have to go to the hospital and I'd be put in a plaster cast. To this day I still can recall her deep concern as her words were accompanied by a deeply furrowed brow and greatly enlarged eyes. Even at the preschool age that I was, I realized that she believed in what she was saying so I took her words at face value. Nonetheless, for as long as I can remember, the sight of a casted person has intrigued me.

Ultimately, what I want to do is to present a series of short essays where I mainly discuss sightings of casted people that I have had over the years. Much in the same way that the duration of each sighting varies, so will my discussions about them. In certain installments, I may discuss several sightings while in certain others, an entire one may be devoted to one cast wearer.

Probably the earliest sighting that I have any recollection of is that of a man in a heeled plaster short leg walking cast (slwc). Based upon the circumstances, I am certain that this sighting occurred while I was less than six years old.

It was winter and I was traveling on a city bus with my mother and at least one of my sisters. At the end of the line, we had to get off in order to transfer onto another bus. At this particular transfer point, two other bus lines began. As we got off our bus, there already was another bus collecting passengers. Most interestingly, the final person in the line of boarding passengers was a man who was on axillary crutches. Below the bottom of one of his pant legs was a casted foot. A sock covered what likely were his toes. The sock covered his toes and the proximal cast until it could no longer - the level where the walking heel protruded out from the bottom of the cast.

I immediately felt gleeful as I was going to get to share a bus ride with a casted person. I rushed toward the castee as I was determined to be the next person in line behind him. I was going to be able to have my nose within feet to inches of the cast as he would be making his way up the three steps into the bus. To this day I have not forgotten my disappointment as my mother called after me in order to stop me since this was not the bus we were taking. DAMN IT, IT WASN'T THE BUS WE WERE TRANSFERRING ONTO!

Reluctantly, I returned next to my mother all the while keeping an eye on the cast that was soon to be but a memory. The thirty seconds or so that it took for the cast to disappear felt like thirty picoseconds. All I could then do was think about what I had seen.

For starters, I wondered why nobody had allowed the poor fellow to go ahead in the line. Even at the young age that I was, I already knew that the disabled had to be treated kindly. After all, although in retrospect I realize that the cast was a walking cast, he did not seem to be even capable of bearing any weight on it as he kept the casted foot elevated relying totally on his good leg and the crutches. He could have greatly benefited from a good Samaritan.

Another thought that crossed my mind was that of wondering why he had the thing on the bottom of his cast. The archaic heel as it were, consisted of a tiny rubber pad that was about the size of a silver dollar supported in place by a series of about ten thin metal looking bars that came out from the underside of the cast. The way that the design of the tiny bars resembled a miniature bird cage seemed to me like it was made to allow air to readily penetrate it. Ah yes, it had to be a means to allow air to penetrate through to the casted foot. Maybe it was from me being low to the ground up to that point in my young life but I definitely knew that feet could often smell rather putrid. How better to avoid the development of a smell than to design a cast that couldn't be removed for weeks with some form of ventilation? How cerebral an infant I was!

Finally, I probably thought the longest about how the fellow had gotten to require the cast. I wondered whether it had hurt a lot and whether it still hurt? What could have been his reaction when the Doctor had told him that he would be getting to live within a portable testimonial to what had been undoubtedly a vicissitudinous event?

Yet another cast sighting from my pre - "Wonder Year" era occurred during the summer. I was with my parents in the family car when we were returning home. In fact, we were but a block and a half away from home when my mother uttered some words of surprise which at this point in time I cannot recall. What she had seen was a young woman in a long leg cast (llc). When I looked I observed a woman stopped on the sidewalk who was propped up on a pair of crutches which were stuck into her armpits. Basically, she had on three items of apparel: a red minidress (highly fashionable at that time), a plaster llc on one of her legs and a sandal on her "good" foot.

My mother waived and smiled at the woman through the open car window.

"You know her?" I managed to ask despite my gawking.

"She's a teller at the bank," came the reply. "She looks like she's out practicing walking on her crutches."

Although my father was driving the car slowly in the residential streets, I knew that I would not have much time to observe the pretty sight. The cast started just above the location where her exposed toes ended. Despite the fact that her dress was awfully short, the top of the cast was not visible. The complete lack of graffiti on the cast did lend credence to the notion that the cast was recently applied. It was very likely that she was a new castee - how exciting!

Later that evening, I took a walk over toward where I would be able to see the location where we had observed the casted goddess. To my disappointment, she was nowhere in sight. I regularly returned to that area over the course of the next month or so but I never got to set eyes on that castee again. This was probably the very first time of many that I proactively attempted to get to see a cast wearer. I would no doubt have lingered within eyesight of this cast wearing woman had I set eyes upon her again.

Unbeknownst to me at the time of these rather brief sightings, I did have one major feather in my cap: youth! With any luck, I had my whole life ahead of me in order to get to see a myriad of casts and cast wearers.