02/02/2003

A little too much teenage testosterone made Thomas A. Cahir III, then a sophomore at Classical High School in Providence, do a foolish thing.

Six weeks earlier, during basketball practice, he had taken a bad spill and broken both wrists -- one in 13 places. On Feb. 6, the casts or "manacles" as Cahir called them, were supposed to come off.

By noon, as the severity of the storm became apparent, Classical sent everyone home. By the time Cahir arrived at his house on Pinehurst Avenue, his mother refused to venture out again to bring him to the doctor's office.

"At this point, I almost lost what sanity I had left," Cahir wrote. "I tried to make [my mother] understand what I had been going through at school, the kind of daily ridicule I was subjected to, and finally it came to me.

"I walked into the pantry and emerged with a Ginsu knife. You know, the kind of knife popular in the '70s, advertised to cut through anything. Well, I was going to put it to the test. My mother was screaming at me to put the knife down and later explained that she thought I was going to hurt myself. To this day, my siblings say that I had a maniacal look on my face.

"I wasn't crazy, though, just angry at what I thought was an unfair situation. So I inserted the knife into the bottom of the right cast and hacked upward. . . . It took several slices before the cast was finally free of my wrist.

"My first thoughts after liberating my right wrist were how skinny [it] looked; 'thank God, no more using a knitting needle to scratch'; and 'the daily humiliation of school is over.'

"My Mom's first thought was, 'Well, now that you have your cast off, you can shovel all of the snow we're going to get.' "

Thomas A. Cahir III

76 Briar Hill Drive

Cranston