Debbie Jo Price

"I’ve killed my baby!”

Debbie Price tends to overreact.

She seems to favor incoherent screaming when dealing with a crisis or her children. Especially if the crisis is her children. Consistently either of her sons or daughter is on the brink of being disowned.

But she has never killed any of them though. Really.

Occasionally, one of her children did travel to the mythical inch of his or her life during a well-deserved spanking. But no one ever died. As often as they tried to do themselves in as toddlers, none were very successful.

While they tried to make their children’s formative years as uneventful and boring as possible, Debbie and her husband Herb were foiled at unexpected turns.

Herbert, Debbie and Joshua Price - 1974

When their oldest son, Joshua, was old enough to walk, but not yet mature enough to communicate his needs in something other than baby-talk, he tended to point and whine often. On one spring day in 1975, he was pointing and cooing at a mini-motorbike his mother was riding in her parent’s yard.

Clearly, he wanted attention. Secretly, he wanted to ride along.

After an intolerable amount of slobbering and panting, Debbie relented and placed Joshua on her lap. She steered with one hand while holding onto him with the other. During a turn on a small grade, the inevitable happened. The mini-bike tipped over.

Joshua’s mother and the bike fell onto one of his small legs.

It snapped like crispy bacon.

As a hysterical woman clutched a crying child to her bosom, a forlorn husband at her side fumbled for car keys, and Merit Lights, finding neither.

In the nearby kitchen, a grandmother shook her head disapprovingly.

Never taking her eyes off the dinner she was cooking and sipping slowly on a Miller pony.

In the distance, a grandfather deadpanned, “Well Debbie, I guess you’ve killed him.”

Those words echoed in Debbie’s ears as she and Herb sped toward the emergency room.

Debbie entered Morristown-Hamblen Hospital’s emergency room screaming, “I’ve killed my baby!” So convincing was her manner, the nurse on duty called the police.

Fortunately, the responding officer happened to be her brother-in-law, Jerry Reece. He reassessed the situation and decided the best course of action was to shut her up.

“Debbie…Debbie! You can’t say that in a hospital!”

Eventually, Joshua recovered.

The older he got, the less interested Debbie and Herb were in his well being as they were in what he might have done to financially ruin them. After an auto accident, they wouldn’t ask if he was alright.

They asked, “How is the truck?”

See my parents first home, the mini-bike in question and more at the Our First Home slide show.

Joshua in a cast - 1975