When I was 5 I caused my first accident. We were all sitting at the table having a meal, and I started imitating a hiccuping train conductor I’d seen on a cartoon.

“All aboard-hic!” I announced, jerking my head backward on the “hic.”

Steve was then 2 years old. In order to be level with us he sat on his knees on his chair. When he tried the hic-jerk he slammed his chin down on the table. His teeth went through his lower lip.

I think the number of stitches was seven. Then Steve had to take his liquids through a straw for awhile. I remember Mom saying the one good thing about the injury was it weaned him off his bottle.

I wasn’t done. Shift five years forward and move the scene to Chula Vista, California. Now Andy is 2, we’re in the kitchen, and I start chanting “Ring Around the Rosie.” He takes it up but he’s not sitting at the table. He’s spinning on the kitchen floor. It was cute till he whacked his eyebrow on the underside of the counter edge. A different brother, a different ER, but once again stitches.

It was probably two years after that accident, around 1962, when Steve got his concussion. I’ll always wonder if I compounded it. We were riding our bikes around the block with some friends, and when we came swooping around the corner we intersected with a runaway basketball. Some boys had been shooting at the hoop that was mounted on top of Bruce Cole’s garage, and when the ball got away from them it collided with Steve’s front wheel. It knocked his bike out from under him. He landed on his back on the asphalt. When I got to him and raised his head, his eyes were open so I thought he was fooling around with me. “You faker” I pronounced as I let go of his head. I never expected it to thunk back on the street like that.

I got a little reputation as some kind of jinx. But that wasn’t fair. I didn’t cause all the accidents. I had nothing to do with the time Steve jumped barefoot off the rail fence in our New York back yard. He landed on metal edging our parents had installed to separate flower beds from lawn. The way it sliced into the bottom of his foot was memorable.

And the messiest accident was caused by Mom. We had aluminum-framed casement windows in Chula Vista, and the one easiest to open in the kitchen was right above the outside water spigot. One Saturday morning Mom opened the window while Dad was bent to adjust the water for the sprinklers. When Dad stood up, the top of his head met the corner of the window with sincerity and force. That’s when I learned how much a scalp wound bleeds.