It was Saturday morning during the summer of 2015. The weather was sunny, hot, and perfect to do anything outside, almost too perfect. After breakfast, I was itching to go outside, run around, play a couple games, and feel the freedom to do whatever I wanted. But, in a few hours, I would be itching to get out of bed.

I decided to sleep in on this particular Saturday morning, even though it was the summer. I finally decided to throw myself out of bed at ten o'clock in the morning. I made my way over to the bathroom to start my daily routine. Put my contacts in, brush my teeth, and wash my face. I got changed and walked downstairs to meet my family in the living room. By this time everyone in my house already ate so I made myself some eggs and sat in the kitchen watching Sportscenter. After breakfast, I turned off the TV, cleaned the kitchen and joined the rest of my family in the living room. After sitting around for a while, my sister and I decided to go on a bike ride. We used to ride our bikes all the time as kids, but as we grew up we abandoned them. We entered the garage and hopped on our bikes before realizing that the tires had no air in them. They were very flat. My sister, being the bossy one in the house, made me go to the workbench and grab the air pump to fill all the tires. Now that we were ready to go we made our way to the Dunkin Donuts across town.

After we arrived at the main road and darted across to get to the sidewalk. The bike ride began. The beginning of the trip was tough due to the many hills that we needed to climb before reaching flat ground. After the first few minutes, the bike ride started to become more relaxing and enjoyable. After about 15 minutes my sister started yelling at me to slow down so I would have enough time to turn down the street that Dunkin Donuts is located on. As a refreshment, I decided to buy a strawberry banana smoothie and I was pleasantly surprised that it tasted so good.  It was around noon when my sister and I decided to head home and get some lunch. On the way back home, I started to think about why my sister was so bossy. I hate people who boss me around and I wonder what it would be like to retaliate. After thinking about how overbearing my sister was, we reached the hills. In order to get up the hill, I needed to gain some momentum. I told my sister, I was going to go ahead and build up some speed to make it up the hill. My sister being older, and wiser told me to take it slow because it was too dangerous. I used to hate being bossed around so I took off and started paddling faster up the hill. Even though I was building up a lot of speed, I was still able to retain control of the bike. As I started to climb the hill I could already see the road above, but then something went wrong. When I was about fifteen feet from the top of the hill the bike whipped towards the main road into the path of an oncoming vehicle. In order to avoid getting into a head-on collision with a car, I pulled the bike back on the sidewalk before I lost control of the bike and fell over the handlebars. As I was falling the first part of my body that made contact with the ground was my right knee. Then both my forearms hit the ground hard. I tried getting up right away, but I couldn’t straighten my leg due to the pain in my right knee, so I had to lay down and wait for help. A group of adults stopped by to help and one man ask where I was hurt the most I told him my right knee and he replied, “Yeah you got that pretty good.”
After laying down for a few minutes I realized that my forearms were scrapped badly and that there was a lot more blood than I thought. I tried to sit up and try to walk back to my house a block away, but the crowd insisted that I should stay where I was. My mom arrived to help me home and thanked the people for stopping by to help. After cleaning out all the dirt and gravel from my cuts, I took a moment to really look at my legs and forearms. Both of my forearms were scraped up, but my left forearm was the worse of the two. I then looked at my legs and miraculously my left leg was completely fine, but my right leg was a different story. My right leg had cuts from the top of my knee all the way through my shin, and there was a massive gash about an inch and a half in diameter about half an inch deep. That was when I realized that it was going to be a long next couple of weeks. The next day I decided to inspect my broken bike to try and discover what had happened leading up to the incident. I soon discovered a puncture mark on my front tire, which was now completely flat. There was no sharp object on the tire; however, it still infuriated me that one small object led me to a fall that took the rest of my summer away. After I finished inspecting I went inside and decided to focus on the road to recovery.

Even though this event has always been kept in the back of my mind, there are some signs I cannot ignore about what happened that day. I have a scar on my right knee where the gash used to be and the skin is shaded slightly darker than the rest of my leg. I also have a patch of road rash on my left forearm that I see every day when I wake up in the morning. For the rest of my life I will have to live with these consequences, all because I refused to listen to my sister that one time.