It was July 18, 2019. The weather was sunny with a high of eighty degrees. I knew it was going to be a good day. I woke up at ten-thirty to the sound of my mother opening my door and allowing my two dogs to run in my room. 

“Good morning Katie,” She would say.

What I loved about Thursdays was that I had nothing going on until four o’clock! So, I spent the whole day in my bed watching Netflix. The day was pretty much perfect. At three I had to get ready for dance. So I packed my bag with all of the things I needed for that day. 

“Are you ready to go?” I asked my mom. 

Then we were off in our brown Honda Pilot and on our way to dance. I was excited to see all my friends and have fun.

 Then I got a text from my friend Natalie she said, “Are you coming to dance?”

“Yeah,” I respond.

Natalie never came to dance anymore because she quit. So when I heard that she was coming to dance that day I was very happy! I had arrived in Oregon City right on time. My first class was hip hop. It was surprisingly very boring and not fun. Then I had ballet which was the typical jumping and turning. But then it was time. It was time for Natalie to come. Right when ballet was over I left the room and saw her sitting there on her phone. I ran up and said hello. Words can't describe how thrilled we both were to see each other!

 For summer classes the dance studio required everyone who was on a competing team to take an acro class on Thursdays from six-thirty to seven-thirty. I was one of those people, and I was extremely bad at acro. I could barely do a somersault, but I tried anyway. Natalie chose to take acro with me that day. Six-thirty arrived and it was time to start. We started by finding a partner and grabbing a mat from the storage room to begin warm-up. 

“Wannabe partners?” Natalie asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

So we did our warm-ups and then we stretched for a while. 

The teacher started to instruct us what to do, “ Alright let’s bring five of the mats together to form a section to do round offs and aerials. Then bring a mat to this area for handstands, and bring a mat over here and that’s where I can help you with any other tricks you want to learn.”

“Do you wanna go to the handstand place?” I asked Natalie.

“Sure,” Natalie said.

So we made our way to the handstand area. We do about four handstands until we come up with a good idea, to do a handstand competition. We will compete to see who can hold their handstand for longer. We counted down from three and then we are up in our handstands. We held it for about ten seconds and then Natalie came down. 

“I won!” I thought.

I keep holding the handstand position for about three seconds and then boom. A huge thud on the ground. Everyone in the room stops what they are doing and looks. Its as if everything was in slow motion. I figured out that I fell on my head and was laying on the ground with my hands on my head. The teacher runs to me and asked me if I was ok. I lay there for what felt like years figuring out the answer to her question. 

“Yes,” I respond.

The teacher grabs my hand and helps me stand up. 

“Your lip is bleeding,” She told me.

We walk to the bathroom and she gets me a paper towel to wipe off some blood. She goes and gets the front desk lady, Liz, and tells her what happened. Liz comes down to see how my lip was doing. She told me it was very puffed up and cut. She went and got me some ice for my lip told me that I might want to call my mom and tell her to pick me up. So I go and grab my phone from my bag. I go and to the camera first to see what my lip looked like. It was gigantic! I go and dial my mom’s phone number. When she picked up the phone her tone of voice was somewhat scared because I never call her in the middle of dance. I told her what happened and she came right away. Fifteen minutes later she showed up. I put on my shoes and walk to the car. The rest of the evening I sat there icing my lip. It took a few weeks to fully recover my lip. 

What I learned from this experience was to be safe. If I chose to be safe and come down from the handstand when I was starting to feel like I was going to fall then I wouldn’t have injured myself. Now if I were to do this again then I would choose to lose instead of getting injured.