I was sitting by the fire, toasting marshmallows for my s’mores, when someone noticed the scar on my right shin. “Damn bro how’d you get that”
I looked down at my scar and started to reminisce.
“Well it started how most injury stories start,” I began to say, “I was in elementary school acting like an idiot…”
My friend Mason and I were outside of his house, playing with the rope swing in his front yard. We had created a what we thought was a flawless system to get the highest possible swing; we got a running start, swung on top of the bird bath, then jumped off of it as high as we could. It was going great for a while, until it started to rain. Mason went inside to grab a jacket and I stayed outside to continue what felt like flying at that age. I got ready to do what I’d just done successfully plenty of times, and start to run up towards the bird bath. Unfortunately, I did not take into account the rain creating mud. I slipped on my way to the bird bath and swung straight into it, by leg banging against the side with a lot of force. I got up, feeling nothing but relative numbness in my leg, and looked down. My eyes were greeted by the sight of my bone, white as day, exposed by the massive hole in my shin.
I start to walk back into the house, my leg beginning to fill with blood, when I saw Mason on the porch. I said the only thing to him I could think to say in that moment, “Hey Mason, can I have a band-aid?” He said sure and yelled at his mom too get me a band-aid. She responded saying she’d be out with one when she finished up making lunch. This was when Mason finally noticed that there was a gaping, bleeding hold in my leg. “Hey mom, Fisher REALLY needs a band-aid!”
Mason’s mom rushed outside and sat me down as soon as she saw what had happened. At this point I was still in shock and acting incredibly calm about the whole situation. Mason’s mom got ahold of my mom on the phone, who had just been by to check up on me an hour earlier, and started explaining the situation.
“Kelly, I think you need to get back here ASAP. Your son has a hole in his leg. Actually, that doesn’t describe it well enough. It’s bigger than a hole, your son managed to create a divot in his leg.”
Mason’s mom continued to talk to my mom for a second, then hung up and let me know that my parents were on their way. I waited patiently on the porch, still not feeling even the slightest discomfort, while Mason’s mom scrambled to try to stop the bleeding. My parents finally got there and and loaded me into the car as carefully as they could, trying not to spill what could only be described as a bowl full of blood in the middle of my leg.
We finally made it to the doctor’s office where I got my leg stitched up, and soon I no longer had the luxury of feeling no pain. The doctor needed to numb the wound before she stitched it, and the feeling of the needle repeatedly going inside the hole in my leg was one of the most painful experiences I have ever had. Soon after though, it was all numbed up and 27 stitches later (15 inside my leg and 12 closing the outside), I was all ready to go.
“And that is the story of how I got this scar on my leg.” I said as I finished up my story. After some arguing over whether or not I actually asked for a band-aid when I saw my bone, the conversation soon switched the the next brutal injury story, and I went back to toasting marshmallows.