Secret 23: Nothing broken

I've never, not once, broken a bone. Of course, now that I've said that I will immediately fall down a set of stairs, I'm sure. I did crack a rib once. I was in the third grade and I had just started at a new elementary school. There was a very tall set of monkey bars (taller than the teachers and probably 6 or 7 feet up). Our playground was entirely concrete, ALL of it (this was before mom's everywhere started complaining because kids could get hurt ~ like that would actually happen... wait...). To make things safe for the kids there was about 2 or 3 inches of sawdust on top of the concrete but who are we kidding?

So, being the incredibly intelligent children that we were the girls had a contest. Standing at the far end of the monkey bars, you jump and grab on to the furthest rung you can reach (as opposed to just grabbing the first bar and off you go). I had the record. I could jump to the fifth bar before grabbing on and, having the record, I was the ruler of the playground for a little while.

Then a new girl started at our school. She played our game and also grabbed the fifth rung. Well... I couldn't just be tied, could I? And anyway, who did she think she was? (These were my very logical thoughts.) So I tried for the sixth bar. And missed. I fell from roughly 6 feet, at speed, onto concrete. As previously mentioned, 2 inches of sawdust means zip now. I completely knocked the wind out and couldn't breathe. One little girl went into hysterics screaming "SHE'S DEEAAAAD!" and almost hyperventilated. Duty teachers from all over the playground ran madly for me as soon as the 1/2 dozen or so screaming girls registered in their ears. It was all very dramatic.

** The image is from here