This sounds stupid today, but having a broken arm or leg was a rite of passage back then, I still think I have my cast somewhere, which everybody signed, when I broke my arm jumping off a wall as a dare.
My mother said, "Well you learned your lesson".
That’s so cool that you kept your classmates’ signatures!
Not stupid at all to think of breaking a bone as a rite of passage — we were encouraged to run and play hard, accidents happened with sports, metal playground equipment and bikes, and parents didn’t sue. Doctors charged affordable rates before BigMedicine (and the taxpayer subsidizing welfare and illegal aliens’ clinics, too).
I remember so many kids with arms in a cast and slings made out of old bed sheets, crutches for broken lower limbs and heavy plaster casts covered with signatures. Can’t remember what we signed with before felt markers became ubiquitous around 1958.
The girls from wealthy families had pink or green casts—food coloring or paint mixed into the plaster at the orthopedist’s office, I guess. Most of us schlubs had plain white plaster with gauze wrapped around it before it dried, and a wooden stump on the bottom of the leg casts.
The casts soon got dirty. You had to tie a plastic garbage bag up around a cast in order to take a shower so the plaster wouldn’t dissolve. Can’t remember what we did before plastic garbage bags became affordable, also around 1960 — probably had to stand at the sink and wash with a cloth, like in Victorian days.
Broken collar bones, arms, legs, ankles, foot bones, fingers — all part of growing up.