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My mom and dad were free-range parents before that was a thing. This occurred to me during the past year as I watched my children receive the best-in-class medical care for various injuries, including a fractured ankle for Jack, 11, and a torn ACL for Finn, 13.

Would my parents have availed themselves of the miracles of modern medicine had I needed them in my 1980s adolescence? Of course. But the first step of treatment for ailments south of bone-sticking-out was always a visit to “the box.”

The box was a vintage metal first-aid kit stored under the sink in the guest bathroom. Rectangular with an incongruously jaunty handle, it looked like a cross between a steelworker’s lunch pail and a nuclear scientist’s briefcase. Other than dings and dents, the only marking on each egg-white broadside was a red cross with arms of equal length. It signaled both protection under the 1949 Geneva Conventions and memento mori to a rambunctious teenage boy.

So foreboding was it that on approach, I sometimes questioned whether I really was sick. This occasionally inspired me instead to lie down, ice up or simply shake it off. And so the box delivered its first course of medicine without ever being opened.

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But sometimes—for instance, after getting my bell rung by the metal rim in a game of trampoline basketball (an idea as bad as it sounds)—contemplating the box wasn’t enough. It had to be opened. In these instances, it delivered its second and final, albeit limited, dose of healing.

That’s because the box contained only four things: aspirin, a tube of Ben-Gay, a beige ACE bandage and a rosary. Why my parents stocked and replenished only these items, I will never know for sure. I have to conclude that in their minds, the universe of childhood maladies consisted solely of headaches, charley horses, pulled hamstrings and spiritual despondency.

Funny enough, I grew up believing these were the only bad things that could befall me. It made for a carefree childhood, one in which headaches, thigh bruises and tweaked muscles passed quickly and God was always just a conversation away.

Once I’d left for college, I realized I might need medical attention beyond aspirin, analgesic cream and bandaging. But by then the box, 100 miles away, had done its job. And I still pray the rosary. Perhaps my parents were on to something.

Mr. Kerrigan is an attorney in Charlotte, N.C.

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Appeared in the December 8, 2022, print edition.


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