Benjamin Franklin once said “Early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” I first heard that quote in 5th grade, but it wasn’t until two years later when I truly under stood what it meant.

The summer before 7th grade was just about over, and my friends and I planned to end it the best way we knew how, by pulling an all-nighter! We all the necessities; soda, chips, candy, and more soda! It was set to be the best night ever. I started out full of energy, but sometime around midnight, I hit a wall. My eye lids felt like they were being pulled down by 50 pound weights and my mind was caught in a fog, like it was a faint dream, but it was real life, and the only thing keeping me awake was the enormous amount of caffeine that I was taking in every five minutes. I was like this for about 6 hours, until out of nowhere, my phone rang. “Hello” I answered in a scratchy, monotone voice. To my surprise, it was my mom.

“Hey, sorry to wake you, but I totally forgot about our hike to day, with all your cousins. Just go walk outside, and I’m on my way right now.” It wasn’t until I was actually lying on the curb when the thought hit me,
“How am I going to move my whole body to the top of a mountain, when I can barley move my eye lids to the top of my eyes?” Well, somehow I made it, but on the way down, my far from clear mind decided it was such a waste of time to walk down all the switch backs, when I could just slide down the mountain. So I plumped myself down and started to go, slowly at first but, as I started to gain speed, I realized I was headed straight for a huge rock. My hands got burned as they tried to slow me down, but it was no use. I was on the express train to bolder city, where its main import is out-of-control-12-year-olds, and its main export is pain. My only hope was to try to jump over it, so when I was a foot away, I launched off, barely clearing my upper body, but on my way down my right leg scraped across the rock, and a shot pain exploded through my leg as I summer salted on to a flat part of the trail.
So there I lie, with a gigantic gash in my leg, just thinking about how old bens words had come back to haunt me. All because I didn’t go to bed early (well, go to bed at all) I was now not healthy, not wealth (due to the crushed cell phone in my pocket) and as evidence of my decisions, not very wise.