It was a wonderful green and sunny day, April 5th, 2020. Partly cloudy, perfect. 80 degrees, perfect. The hot sun was baking my damp skin as I walked outside after I woke up. My eyes were stuck together with sweat after a long hot night, but I knew today would be a good day. 

I had this thought of what it would feel like to break a bone. I thought it wouldn’t hurt that bad and I might look cool with a cast on. I quickly took the thought away and I went back into the cool aired house. I decided it would be best if I took a shower so I went downstairs to take a nice shower to get ready for the day. 

As soon as I dried off I realized that my cousin, James, was over at his dad's for the weekend and I hightailed it to my phone. I started calling my cousin and he answered. I asked him if I could come over and we could go out on the trampoline because it was a great day to do so, and he said yes. I threw my clothes on, ate some breakfast, and hopped on my bike to ride over to my grandma and grandpa's house. Their house is only half a mile away, so I had an easy way to get there. I parked my bike out on the front sidewalk and walked up to the house. I couldn’t find my cousin anywhere so I looked around. I eventually found him already on the trampoline jumping around waiting for me. 

He was already sweating a good amount because it was getting hotter by the minute but that didn’t stop him, he was fueled by pure energy. I got on and started jumping and, of course, I had this “wonderful idea” that we should do a flipping competition. It might be fun, I said. Don’t worry nothing will happen, I said. My parents never broke a bone or had any major injuries, I’ll be fine I said. It started off pretty good, we were having loads of fun. We were announcing it like we were some hot-shot athletic beasts on live television. I started getting tired from doing so many flips and my air time was getting a lot shorter, but that didn’t stop me from having fun. But little did 7th grade me know that something horrible was going to happen. 

I just finished a flip and my cousin wanted me to do another one, he was impressed that I could do so many flips. So I started another one. Jump, jump, jump, flip, spin, land. Except I didn’t land or land correctly. My whole right foot was at a backward leftish angle, but I didn’t know. I kept going down and continued my landing when I heard a huge POP. All of a sudden my whole body felt like it was in white flames and like I was in hell being eaten alive by some kind of fire monster, gnawing, and gnawing at my foot as it sat there, mangled and dismembered. I screamed to the top of my lungs yelling at my cousin to go get grandma. I sat there for what felt like hours for my parents to arrive. I was in so much pain but I didn’t cry, I couldn’t. 

My parents brought me to the hospital after a horrible car ride. The nurses sat me down on a table and took an x-ray of my foot. I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t move. They came back after what seemed like forever and told me my fibula, tibia, and numerous other bones in my foot were broken. At this time my growth plate was not very developed because I was 12 and the break was right next to it. They didn’t determine if the growth plate was harmed or not. So thoughts were rushing into my head wondering if I would ever walk normally again, or ever play sports again. Because if it was harmed my ankle wouldn't grow anymore and I would never do that stuff ever again. 

On the car ride home after I got my splint on I was confused about why my bones broke, it was so unusual because no one in the family has ever had a serious injury and why it happened to me. I broke it during Covid year so that was good. But I missed out on a whole summer basically having to sit on the couch the whole time except for august. It set me back months on growth as I lost almost all the muscle in that leg.

 I got over it very soon and started to accept it as being a part of me because it always will be. My foot is still stiff and makes weird noises to this day. But I see this event as something to learn from and I accept it being a part of me forever.