Aaron's+Memoir

My Third Grade Adventure by Aaron

In the third grade when I was nine, I did a lot of stuff, I used to eat lots and lots of CANDY!!! I had so much fun. One of the main things I used to do a lot was play sports. I really liked baseball.

At this point I was a happy go lucky kid. Mostly, kind of, Well not always. In other words, I threw a lot of temper tantrums. I was the best at doing this, just kidding, I was horrible. I mean I wasn’t really that bad. I had a bunch of friends and was pretty happy MOST of the time. I was also on a baseball team. Overall, I was a very athletic kid. I never thought I could be hurt by a fun bouncy thing, but I was wrong

I remember this clearly, my friend Connor, my other friend Avi, and I were bouncing on Connor’s trampoline. It was a beautiful sunny spring Saturday. The birds were singing, the clouds were fluffy white puffs in the sky but fate was about to play a cruel joke on me. We were bouncing up and down while rays of sunlight reflected of the black surface of the trampoline and cars were speeding down Lincoln Drive. Connor hits the trampoline in just the right way that catapulted off it. When I landed, my foot twisted just right and then SNAP. I screamed in pain, clutching my ankle. Luckily, my dad was at Avi’s house, which was diagonal to Connor’s house. Avi sprinted to his house while Connor stayed with me. My parents thought it was nothing, but when I couldn’t walk they took me to the hospital. As it turned out I had fractured my ankle and I had to use crutches.

This was on a Saturday. The day before my teacher had told us that we had a field trip on Monday. “Don’t get hurt!” she had said, and what did I do? Despite my teacher's warnings, I went and fractured my ankle. I wasn’t allowed to go on the camping trip for the first of three days. On the second day I came. I arrived to the campsite in the Pocono Pines. My friends cheered me on as I came out of the car with my crutches. The fire was burning, breakfast had just ended, the sky was a beautiful shade of blue and despite my disabled ankle, I was feeling great!

That first day we went kayaking. I kept my crutches in the boat in case I needed to walk somewhere. I remember I really liked the white water, when we stopped, I found I could wade through the fast moving water. When we came back to the campsite I found I could hobble around without my crutches. We played a little bit of soccer or football for every other country. I struggled because I was hurt. That night I slept with my friend Benjamin and his dad in a tent. The floor of tent was a square, and I slept on one side. In the middle of the night, I woke on the completely other side of the tent! I got up to go to the bathroom. I didn’t want to go to the stinky, and I mean STINKY outhouses. I was also too scared to go all the way to the outhouse in the dark, so I peed on a tree. I don't remember anything from the third day. When I got back I wasn't allowed to play baseball for the whole rest of the season and guess what, my team won the championship WITHOUT ME!!!

At the time this felt terrible. I wanted to cry in a hole mostly because I wasn’t at the championship game. Before fracturing my ankle, I always wanted crutches. Afterwards I never wanted to see crutches again. Looking back, I am kind of grateful that I fractured my ankle. If I hadn’t I surely would have never remembered this so clearly.

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