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All your fault
As a child, I always loved blaming things on my siblings. I never wanted to take responsibility for the things I did, so instead, it was always one of my siblings who did it. For example, the time my sister spilled hot chocolate all over the white carpet in the living room. Or the time my brother drew smiley faces all over the wall in my room. Or even, the time my sister broke my arm.
Yes, there was a time that my own sister broke my arm. Now, it is something we both look back at and laugh about, but at that time, it surely wasn’t.
I was in third grade. It was early fall, just at the start of the school year. The crisp, bright colored leaves lined the dry, faded grass. The sun shone bright and the trees whooshed in the wind. School had just ended, and my siblings and I went outside to play. The leaves crunched beneath our feet as we ran outside to the playset in our backyard. I headed straight for the monkey bars, which was my absolute favorite part of our playset. My palms ached and swelled and were covered in blisters from playing on the monkey bars too much, but I didn’t care. My brother ran straight to the pond in our yard to check up on the frogs living in there. They had just had tadpoles the day before, and, the animal lover he is, he had been keeping an eye on them since. My older sister went to one of the three swings on the playset. She would swing extremely hard to the point where it appeared she was flying in the sky. I wished I could swing that high, but I knew I couldn’t, even if I tried.
I climbed up the ladder to reach the platform of the playset, wiped the sweat from my hands on my pants, and placed them on the first bar. I grasped the bar tightly as I kicked my feet off the platform, and brought them up to the next monkey bar. I hooked both my legs around it, then brought myself up so I was sitting up, on top of the monkey bars. I loved the feeling of being so high, and being able to see everything beneath me. From there, I watched dragonflies zip around the sky, and leaves fall down from trees. The wind breezed through my hair. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the sound of leaves rustling in the wind. CREAK! CREAK! I was disrupted from my peaceful moment by my older sister, who was swinging right below me. She was swinging extremely high, as always, and it caused the entire playset to creak and shake.
I sighed. “Hello? Could you swing any louder?”, I asked, extremely annoyed.
“Actually, yes, I can.”, she said, and with that, she began to swing even harder.
I immediately jumped off the monkey bars, landing perfectly on the grass, and watched her as she swung back and forth. It almost appeared as if she was soaring, her feet touching the sky as she went forward.
“I bet you can’t swing as high as I can”, said my sister.
I hated that my sister was always trying to act like she was better than me. Okay, maybe she was, but there was no need for her to bring it up all the time.
However, there was no way I was going to admit to her being better than me.
“Bet”, I said, as I crossed my arms and made my way towards the swings.
In order to get to an open swing, I had to cross the swing that my sister was currently swinging on. So, when she swung forward, I walked behind her to get to my swing. However, I must have not calculated the timing right because a couple seconds later, she smacked into me and I was lying on the ground.
I heard my sister’s swinging stop. I felt a sudden, sharp pain in my arm. My sister quickly jumped off her swing to see if I was okay. I quickly tried to get up, but when I put my arms out to get myself up, I noticed that my left arm hurt. Like a lot. I howled at the sudden sting of pain.
“Are you okay?”, my sister asked me with a concerned face.
I heard my brother walking over from the pond.
“What happened? Are you okay?”, he asked me, with the same, concerned face as my sister.
I could feel the tears streaming down my face. The pain in my arm was beginning to make me sweat. My head was pounding. I looked up at my two siblings, both of them hovering over me. I immediately got myself up to my feet, shoved them both out of my way with my good arm, and angrily started to make my way inside. The crunching sound of the leaves beneath me, instead of sounding cool and satisfying like I always thought, sounded like screams as I took each stomp. I stormed inside of the house and slammed the sliding door shut, and locked it to keep my siblings out.
Now that I was inside, I looked at my arm a little closer. I bent it back and forth a few times, noticing the sharp pain that was emitted each time.
A few seconds later, I heard my sibling banging on the door.
“Let us in!” I could see them mouthing from the other side.
I turned away. Just then, my dad entered the room. His neutral face turned into sudden concern when he saw me crying.
“What happened?” he asked me.
I showed him my arm.
“M-my arm hurts,” I said, feeling my eyes well up with tears again.
My dad took my arm and inspected it.
“It looks fine”, my dad said, “but let’s just wrap it up to be sure.”
“Ok.”
“How did you get hurt?”
Just then, my sister banged on the door again. My dad turned around, to see both of my siblings pressed against the glass sliding door.
“Did you lock them out?” he asked, turning to me, and then back to the door as he went to open the door for them.
He opened the door, and my siblings came inside.
My dad turned back to me. “So, what happened?”
My sister suddenly spoke up. “I was swinging and then Nabeelah randomly came up behind me! I couldn’t stop myself from swinging because it was so sudden. She fell on her arm and now she says it's hurting.”
“No! I was just walking! You purposely swung really hard to crash into me and hurt me!” I fought back.
“No! That was your fault! How was I supposed to stop swinging that quick?!”
“Okay girls enough. Nabeelah, come on, let me get your arm wrapped up.”
As my dad was wrapping up my arm, I thought about what had happened. I knew, deep down, that it was truly my fault. I knew that I should have been more careful. But I knew that I was never going to admit it.
The next day, I showed up to school in a cast. The night before, my dad had taken me to the doctor just to be on the safe side, and it turned out that my arm was broken. I had to get it wrapped up in a cast.
As I entered the classroom, everyone was curious as to what had happened to my arm.
“My sister broke it.” I would say.
“Your sister broke your arm?!? How?” Other kids would ask.
I would slightly exaggerate the story and tell them the story about how I was innocently walking in our yard, and my sister was swinging really high and jumped off and landed on top of me.
They would look at me, eyes wide, but I would quickly change the topic by asking them to sign my cast. They would happily accept.
A few days later, my cast was no longer the plain slate it was when I first got it on. It was now covered in the signatures of a bunch of kids from my grade, some of them which I barely knew.
I came home from school that day. I was about to work on my homework when I noticed that my favorite pink mechanical pencil was missing. I knew that I probably lost it somewhere, but I knew that it would be better if I went to go check if my sister had been the one to take it.
My sister’s room was left slightly cracked open. I peeked in, and I saw my sister sitting there, on her bed, crying.
I wonder what she’s crying about, I thought to myself.
That’s when I remembered-- the lie I told everyone about her breaking my arm. Word had spread around about my sister allegedly breaking my arm. Earlier that day during school, during recess, I had seen my sister’s friend come up to her, tell her something - which I couldn’t hear- and I could tell that my sister was trying to put on a fake smile, clearly hurt on the inside.
Before, I wasn’t sure what it was her friend told her earlier, but that’s when it came to me that what she said had something to do with my arm being broken.
That’s when I realized that it wasn’t right for me to blame things on others all the time. I learned that I needed to take responsibility for my own actions and to admit to my mistakes, like how it was my fault that I walked behind her while she was innocently swinging. I learned that blaming others can hurt people, like it did when my sister was sitting in her room, crying. I learned that I need to listen to the other side of the story, and accept the weight that it can hold.
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