The Girl Next Door - Chapter 1

I had just turned twenty and was off on my own at college and totally independent for the first time in my life and just lovin' it,.the campus was really small , so, as a result they had a lot of "off campus housing", and as a freshman I got to live in one of those houses. it was nice , not great ,it looked about like all of the other dorm rooms on the campus but was nine blocks from the school, so if nothing else, it was quiet.This is a good thing, when you carry a class load like they bury freshmen with.our little area had four houses in a cull de sac configuration,and the house I occupied with four other guys ,was the first one you would come to when you drive into the cull d sac,and it was the only Victorian of the four , thus the name" Victorian House ". Well since I was the first one to move in , I naturally got first pick of the quarters , and due to the fact that I had a lot of stuff,I went for the largest quarters ,which included an area in the basement with a lockable door and running water ,a nice work bench ,and great workspace lighting .This area was about thirty four feet by thirty six feet, seven and three quarters .inches long,I have the exact dimension because someone painted it on the wall rather artisticly.this would be the perfect place for my hobbies,and after I build a plaster trap ,I'll be set ..The next house is one that the college moved in two years ago and it is a Tudor style ,and as you might have already guessed ,it is called "Tudor house"and rumor has it that these two houses have ,in the past,hosted some really nutso parties . However the campus security has made it quite clear that a new zero tolerance policy has been put into effect this year and that ,although we can still have parties ,they just cant get crazy,which ,to me is no big deal anyway because I doubt that most of the partiers would enjoy the way I party, in plaster,fiber,and braces .

Now the next house was to be a girls house and to some this might have posed an opportunity that could have been unbearable ,but as it was going to pan out ,it became less of a problem,as we came to know each other better and better.

In the girls house was one girl who came about the same time I did ,and as with our house ,she got the choice rooms and a basement shop as well.,which I assumed that she would use for storing extra stuff .A wise man once said "never assume anything as it only makes an ass of you and me

(ass u me),and so it did,as I was coming home from the grocery store ,I ran into this woman as she was trying to carry her packages in ,and trying to prove that chivalry was not quite dead, I ran over to lend a hand . her packages looked rather heavy and did not appear to have come from the grocery store .Just as I arrived she had dropped one of the bags and as it hit the ground it split open just a bit and the contents spilled out .I made the comment that she must have been an art major ,and with a puzzled look she said "why would you say that " and I said "because of all the plaster(it still hadn't dawned on me at this point yet)at this point she said that was an amateur life caster and wasn't doing it for credit ,but as an extra curricular activity ,you know like golf or tennis and so on ,then she told me that I had an interesting form and that she would like to cast me some time and I said that I thought would be o.k. and finished helping her carry her supplies in and down to the basement .Well once we got to the basement she showed me her casting set-up and at last the light finally came on.she didn't just do lifecastings,but ,from the looks of things ,she did all sorts of casts .Naturally my curiosity just peaked ,so I asked when she thought she would want to do this life cast of "my form"?
to my surprise her answer was "how about right now " ,so thinking that I had zip to do for the next two days I said that I could do that and then asked her how long it would take ,to which she replied "anywhere form 6 hours to 12,days ,depending upon how well I was enjoying being casted ,and or totally immobilized .At this point I said "we need to talk" and invited her over for a beer ,and she accepted ,so off we went over to my "shop" and I showed her what I had ,she nearly flipped and asked if I could put her into one of those things ,and I said o.k. which one and she pointed to a medium sized Milwaukee brace ,saying that a girlfriend of hers had to were one for five years and before she could get a chance to try it on ,her family moved away and this woman never got to try it out,but now with this collection,she could try all sorts of different braces that she has always wanted to try out or on .So we started to discuss it and came to the mutual opinion that we were not crazy and that there were others who had this same strange hobby,and that was going to be a very interesting year for as least us anyway and later that night she casted me from my nose to my toes .
After she was done wrapping all of the plaster ,she told me that it would take about six to ten hours for the plaster to dry completely and that I shouldn't attempt to force anything until then .
So for the next five days I just laid there and she took care of e v e r y thing .She had my arms reaching out from my shoulders and my legs were in a sitting position ,sort of like ,I was sitting on a Harley and was just frozen in time ,or in this case, plaster .This position was quite comfortable and
easy to deal with as functions go .and she would just sit and talk about her desires as they related to braces and casts ,At the end of my first ever casting experience I was just a bit wobbly ,and understandably so ,after having been totally immobile for four and one half days so I had this bi-lat hkafo anyway and it looked like it might fit ,at least be close enough ,so iI donned them ,and they fit
near perfectly,so I grabbed a pair of crutches and made my way to the commons area of my house and waited and waitedand to my surprise when she did finally did show up.she was sporting what looked like a brand new Milwaukee brace. Seeing this I just had to ask"where in the world did you
find that brace" and she said "while I was asleep she snuk out ,and went over to a brace shop she had found near here and asked them to build her  a Milwaukee just for fun ,they agreed and she had    two of them made hers was  custom from cast and mine,to measurement and they both looked just great,and when i asked "how much did you have to pay for them ?"she just smiled and said she called in a marker ,and changed the subject matter back to my hkafo and where  I  got them and so forth.I helped her into her new milwaukee and adjusted it so that it was comfortable and then I had her walk,sit,stand et.c. just to show her how to move about  while in brace ,and she caught on quickly .She then asked if I was going to wear the hkafo or the new milwaukee ,and I asked what she meant by "or"?She started to respond and in mid thought ,stopped and asked how I would wear both,so I showed her .I started by loosening the top unit of the l.s.o. and removed it ,then I donned the milwaukee and re-tightened the rest of the top unit of the h.k.a.f.o. against  the milwaukee and now we have what could be called a" c.t.l.s.h.k.a.f.o".(braced from chin to toes )with the new Milwaukee and those hk's I had an awesome combination,there was one small glitch that i hadn't figured in to the whole system and that  was hose damned drop locks ,so when i stood up for the first time they dropped and I was immobilized un til she came to my assistance and taped them up so as not to be a problem,and we started to head over to the campus for our publik debut ,her in her new milwaukee and me braced nose to toes unbeknownst to either of us a campus photographer was also on campus that day and he got someone really good pix of the show and sent them to us later with the question : can we print this in the college paper? we both said ,why not and so it went into the university news fall edition . shortly after the paper came out ,we started getting calls ,some cranks ,but for the most part real calls from students that were really interested in rec bracing ..
After getting settled in for the year ahead we attempted to start ,what boiled down to a brace club ,but because it was on a midwestern campus with rather limited value structure ,we had to give it an ethereal name to make it sound like a "society "of some sort.So to pay homage to the doctor that more or less conceived this wonderful device we named our club "The Blount Society" ,and only those" in the know " as it were would even come to the meetings ,and as for the rest ,well they could never figure out why when we had a meeting ,everyone there was wearing some sort of brace,granted some were for need and those folks were looking for tips on moving about ,and barriers and so forth ,but most of us were wearing braces for fun ,a concept that escaped a lot of unknowing souls that probably would never know the joys and pleasures of recreational brace use ,The next few weeks were quite interesting,to say the least and our society grew to around a hundred or so members with meetings every wednesday and every other saturday.
   By the sixth meeting we found that we needed to rent a mini-store to hold all of our treasures
(donations from the athletic department and stuff that other disinterested students would bring from home and so forth .One of the most popular donations was that of the discarded milwaukee brace ,we had about fifty-six of them by christmas break ,students would wear them in high school and chuck them up into the attic and there they would just collect dust ,so they would bring them to us . Calipers were the second most popular donation followed by various extremities and knees ,elbows,and neck braces ,every one in the club would wear neck braces on the saturday meetings and all sorts of other braces on the other days .W e even had four faculty members join the society and one of them was the orthopedic wing Chair person..So aside from the club this girl who lived next door to me at college ,and I ,got to be best of friends and as a result can ,and will share more of our adventures in bracing and casting