Outdoor Recreation & Sports

Whenever my father got through with checking the glucose levels in his blood, he’d inject himself with an insulin syringe. It was the only way to fight off diabetes along with his diet. When he threw all his diabetes supplies away, the syringes always spilled out of the garage bag onto the alley floor. A lot of the neighborhood kids would pass by, walking along or riding their bikes, and think that someone in our house was doing a lot of drugs. After all, they were kids. They knew nothing about diabetes. The only thing they could fathom that syringes were for were drugs and, sometimes, a doctor used them. They certainly knew my father wasn’t a doctor and that he wasn’t hitching rides on the ambulances home every day. They just assumed he shot himself up with heroin, morphine, or whatever the big deal was at school that week. I’m unsure how much they told their parents, but none of my friends’ parents liked letting their children hang around at our house. And people used to stare at my father in such a strange, curious way. He’d just laugh at all.