Break number one … Jonathan, aged eight, in Thailand in 2002. Photograph: Courtesy of Jonathan Oldfield View image in fullscreen Break number one … Jonathan, aged eight, in Thailand in 2002. Photograph: Courtesy of Jonathan Oldfield A moment that changed me Psychology A moment that changed me: I broke my arm seven times – and finally listened to what my body was telling me As a child, enduring break after break, I thought of myself as simply unlucky. Truth was, I needed to tune in to my aches, pains and well-founded fears
Prefer the Guardian on Google I t was the first day of spring this year. I was topless, face-down on a foldaway travel table, as the masseuse uttered six words that brought my attempt at relaxation to an abrupt end: “I think your arm is haunted.”
I have broken my right arm seven times: seven breaks on seven separate occasions. Some years, my arm was in a sling more than it was out of one. The novelty of getting your mates to cover your cast in that 00s grafitti “S” and the relief of missing the bleep test at school quickly wore off.
My arm-breaking debut came in 2002, when I was eight and fell off my bike. The second time, I fell off a trampoline. The third time, I jumped off a swing and into my younger brother. Then I was pushed off a bed by my eldest brother. The fifth time, I was playing hopscotch with the girls next door a little too vigorously and fell flat on my face (and arm). For number six, most agonisingly, surgeons deliberately re-broke my arm under anaesthetic because the previous operation had set it incorrectly. And the final time was in Paris in 2007, when I was 13. Playing football, I went to head a ball and fell, hard. Before the pain hit, I stood up and said to my coach: “I think my arm’s broken.” By then, the dull ache of ruptured bone felt familiar, but it didn’t take a doctor to see that my wrist was six inches away from where a wrist should be.
I grew up in different countries for most of my childhood, living across South America, Asia and Europe before moving back to the UK. My parents, language graduates with a severe case of wanderlust, kept travelling and we moved with them. I have experienced some of the planet’s greatest cultures and cuisines, but also some of its worst orthopaedic departments.
View image in fullscreen Break number three … Jonathan with his brother in 2003. Photograph: Courtesy of Jonathan Oldfield I haven’t broken my arm for almost 20 years now and I rarely think about those days of contorting my body like a gymnast to shower without getting my cast wet (top tip: put your arm in a plastic bag). Or of losing a chopstick under the cast after trying to scratch a hidden itch (another tip: metal or plastic chopsticks work best; wooden ones tend to snap and leave splinters).
I asked the masseuse what she meant by “haunted” and she explained that, in some cultures, a repeated injury to the same part of the body could be interpreted as your ancestors trying to contact you. Your ancestors are trying to teach you a lesson, and they are repeating it until it’s learned. “You seem a little tense,” she added, giving me the phone number of someone who could exorcise the arm.
Instead, I rang my parents and jokingly asked if there was any reason an ancestor might be haunting me. Mum said my great-great-grandfather lost his right arm in the first world war. In a rehabilitation camp back in the UK, he learned woodwork and weaving; he made a stool that I used to sit on as a boy. “What w…