Yeah, I know I’m old but check it out. When we were kids my brothers and I would play basketball in the driveway. It was made of concrete. Someone would always end up falling and hitting his head. This was usually my little brother and you could hear the noise sound like an unripe watermelon. He would go inside crying to our mom. We would continue to play.
Did my mother call 911? Did she call the nurse help line? Did she load him into the car and rush him off to the emergency room? No, she put a bag of ice on it and before long my bother would usually return for more punishment.
No ambulance ride, no fire trucks. No emergency room copay, no CT scan of his brain or neck. We just figured if he was hurt bad enough we’d know. Maybe we were stupid or just lucky. Maybe we just wanted to save the insurance company and my folks budget the cost of xrays, labs and all that. Wait a minute, CT scans weren’t invented then, but you get the idea.
We played football in the street. A car would drive by and we’d move until it passed. Someone would fall and start crying and yes, go inside to see mother. Otherwise we usually rinsed off the road rash in the outdoor faucet or rubbed some dirt on it and kept playing. If it was a gnarly wound, we’d get stitches. No antibiotics needed, just rub some dirt on it.
Not sure how things got the way they did; maybe we are softer now, smarter now or have more graduates from Law School.