Silly Stories with Dairy.

Summer Games and Bummer pains.

I was a very reckless child. I would often run around the neighborhood, climb trees, jump off roofs, and seek thrills to burn my excess energy.  When I was around the age of six. I was close friends with my next door neighbor and the neighbor next to him.  We would often get together on weekends or during summer break. 

From time to time we would hang up sheets through out his large garage and fill it with dry ice smoke. We would then have an all out Nerf gun arena to run around in for hours on end.  I would feel like a ninja assassin as I crawled around in the smoke and snuck up silently behind my friends. I always got a kick when I could press my Nerf Gun up against them and make them surrender without firing. 

If it was nice out side we could always jump on his giant trampoline or swim in his above ground pool.  For weeks our favorite thing to do was perform tricks and score each other. We kept holding contests to see who could do the best tricks.

We had all won and lost different rounds over the course of a couple of weeks and we decided one evening to have a all or nothing challenge. My friend brought out his strobe light and boombox and we jumped and swam for awhile before the sun began to set. The contest was on.

My friend whose house we were playing at went first. He bounced a few times forcefully putting his weight into each attempt. Finally he lunged into the air and tried to do a front flip. He over shot it and landed in a belly flop. The loud smack as he hit the water sent a ghost of a pain through my abdomen.

My second friend wasted no time for his trick. He asked us to help reposition the trampoline slightly and then ran out of the yard. A few moments passed before we could hear a loud commotion next door. He had climbed onto of his garage roof and was looking down at the trampoline with new determination in his eyes. He stood there for a few moments before admitting that he was scared.

I was amazed at his creativity. It had never even crossed my mind that  we could jump off of his roof onto the trampoline to reach even new heights. I raced over to his house and joined him up on the roof. It was easy to scale a large stack of fire wood they had piled behind it. As I joined him on the roof and looked down at the trampoline. I saw what he saw. We were way to high up. It was dangerous looking. We both looked at each other nervously before my friend laughed and jumped up. 

He took a few steps back before running at full speed and jumping off of his garage roof. The strobe light made his fall happen one frame at a time. He landed on the trampoline and his legs immediately gave out from under him. He flopped hard onto the trampoline but then still got launched into the air. He waved his limbs around uncontrollably in a desperate attempt to steady himself. He splashed into the pool at a angle that looked so painful. He scrambled his way out of the pool and cursed a few times before pulling himself together. He looked up at me with the largest grin on his face and called out to me over the music playing on the boombox.

"Don't chicken out!" He teased.

I was dedicated to not making his mistake. I thought that if I could just land and jump in one fluid motion, my legs wouldn't give out. I went over the calculations the best my six year old brain could and leapt off of the roof. I felt a weird mixture of freedom, excitement, fear, and regret. As I fell the strobe light caught my eyes. It momentarily shocked me and I landed wrong after all. I bounced right off of the side of the trampoline and landed head first on the ground. I smacked my head on the ground so hard that I thought I was dying. 

For minutes my friends were trying to get me to collect myself. I remember brushing myself off and trying to put on a brave face. All while trying to rush home to bawl my eyes out. I got home and went to bed. I laid in bed desperately trying to keep the room from spinning and to calm my pounding headache. 

The next thing I knew. I was being shook awake and people were shouting at me. I opened my eyes but I could not see anything. I thought I was blind and burst into a panic. I could make out my parents voices and a few strangers as well. I fell asleep again and woke in a hospital bed. I had apparently hit my head so hard that it triggered a few epileptic episodes.  Luckily when I woke up the second time. My vision had returned. I guess the first time I was woken up was during the seizure so my eyes were rolled into the back my of head.

I had two more seizures in the months that followed. I don't remember this time period very well. Because of how young I was and probably because of the injury. I was very lucky that it wasn't any worse than it was.

You would have thought this would have taught me to take it a little easier in my daring attempts to impress my friends. 

When I saw my neighbor friends the next day they informed me that since I had in fact missed the pool. I had been disqualified but they were glad I was alright.  We spent the rest of the summer taking it a little easier but we still got into a lot of fun.