It was the summer after 6th grade, and like always, we were going over to my grandparent’s house to stay the night. You see, when we were little we lived in Cleveland and only got to go over to their house on holidays, so when we moved to Columbus they lived about 20 minutes away and we started going over a lot more. We used the same excuse we always used and that was that they had a pool and we wanted to swim. A majority of the time we would just go over there and only swim for a couple hours each day. So the first day, we didn't go swimming at all we just enjoyed food we couldn't at our house and watched movies and stuff.  On the second day, however, me and my little sister got up a 10:00 am to go swimming instead of just sleeping in.

Looking back now I wish that I would have just slept in, because what I did next pretty much ruined my whole summer. Me and my sister made sure to get our towels before we went out like always. This was because we had been forgetting to get our towels before we went out in previous years and it would make my Grandma mad when we would walk through the house wet to get them when we were done. Then, we went outside and my sister started by just dipping her feet in, not me, after a little bit of hyping up I would just dive right in. I tried to jump in and make a big enough splash to get her wet and it worked, she got mad and decided since she was already wet she would just get in, my sister was 7 or 8 at the time. After a little bit of swimming I decided it was getting a little boring , but instead of doing a couple more jumps off the pool deck or messing with my sister I decided to just get on top of the railing of the pool deck.

I was 12 years old, had never broken a bone, and wasn’t scared of anything, not even this. The pool deck itself was a good 10 or so feet off the ground, combined with the railing, it was about 13 or 14 feet total. The top of the railing was roughly 5 inches wide and it took a lot of balance to get onto it. I did it once and it went as smooth, the second time went just as well, except this time my Grandpa saw me do it. He was pretty worried about me so he came outside and told me not to do it again.

My Grandpa couldn’t watch me to make sure I wouldn’t do it again because he had to leave for work. I knew he was going to work and decided that because he couldn’t stop me, I would just do it again. Looking back now it was pretty dumb, but I was 12 years old and wasn’t scared of things like this, so this wasn’t anything to me. I waited in the pool until I knew he was gone and made my way up the ladder and onto the deck. As I climbed up the railing and tried to balance myself, I failed to realize my feet were soaked and the railing I was standing on was wet from my previous jumps, so as you probably guessed, I slipped and fell off the railing,

The fall was a bad one, and because I was so high up when I slipped, I hit the ground so hard it knocked me out cold.

My sister, who was in the pool at the time, thought it was a joke and that I was pretending to be knocked out. After a multiple attempt to get me to stop “pretending”, she finally when inside and got my Grandmas attention. My brother, Caleb, went outside and woke me up. When I woke up I was confused because I didn’t remember going to my my grandparent’s house and my wrist hurt really bad.

I was lucky that I was knocked out because I only experience the pain after the break rather than the initial pain caused by the break. After I was woken up they had me rest my arm on a pillow and that’s when the memories came back. My Grandma had me get into her car and drove me to the nearest Urgent Care, but when they checked me out they told me and my Grandma that I would have to go to a hospital because I would need surgery. My Grandma called my Mom on the way to the Urgent Care so she was going to just meet us at the hospital. We got to the hospital, they checked me out, and also told us I would need surgery.

My mom stayed with me while the doctor came to give me an IV. The first doctor missed the vain and it hurt really bad, so they got another doctor to do it and that hurt even more. The stuff they put me to sleep with was really strong, so I was asleep in no time. When I woke up I had the cast on and my wrist felt so much better. My mom took me to her car in a wheelchair and on the way home my mom bought me peanut butter filled m&ms, it was the first time I had ever had them and they were amazing. When I got back to my Grandmas house I immediately felt sleepy and never finished my m&ms because as I was falling asleep, I spilled them all over myself. When I woke up later, I had realized that I had learned a valuable lesson from this experience, I learned that you should never start eating something if you feel sleepy.