Boy Scout Lava

It happened on a Thursday evening in late October, 1988.  I know it was a Thursday because I was at a Boy Scout meeting (Troop 369) and we always met on Thursdays at the VFW behind the town library and middle school. While I was pledging my duty to God, country, and obeying the Scout Law, my youngest sister (then 9) and two brothers (7 and 5) were playing a game in my brothers’ bedroom.  Their room had two twin beds, each about a two feet from the wall, with a nightstand in between the parallel beds.  In this iteration of their game, the three of them were villagers stranded on one bed, which was being besieged by lava on all sides.  The bed across the molten river was, however, somehow impervious to the lava and needed to be reached as soon as possible.  As if this challenge wasn’t enough, it was determined that the youngest villager had lost the use of his legs to an unspecified illness (polio, lupus?) and his life could be saved only by two heroic villagers willing to toss their sickly comrade to safety.

One villager grabbed the lame legs, the other the arms, and the countdown started. When one was yelled in unison, the sick villager was heaved across the river and improbably landed safely on the other bed -- until he bounced off the bed, ricocheted off the wall into the bed’s wooden side, crumpled to the floor, and writhed in pain in the space between the bed and wall.  

The injury requiring the most immediate attention was his left eye.  When I got home from Boy Scouts only a few minutes after the wailing had stopped but while the crying continued, I quickly realized his medical needs were beyond my First Aid merit so off to the hospital we raced.

With Halloween only a few days later, he went as a very convincing boxer who lost a tough bout.

Ruelle

1. the area or space between a bed and the wall

2. a receiving room for fashionable French ladies

3. a lane

The etymology is French, rue + elle.