“So, what do we do now?” my little brother asked with a bored expression on his face.
It was a warm, sunny summer day. My cousins had come down from Massachusetts for a vacation. That afternoon, we were alone because my parents, aunt, and uncle were out grocery shopping.
“We could go outside in your backyard,” one of my cousins replied.
.
“Okay. I’m sure we could find something to do out there,” I agreed.
My backyard is gigantic. It’s on the corner of a big hill. Back then, there were no paths to make it easy to climb up or down, it was only a big hill of dirt, weeds, and rocks. There was a large gutter down at the bottom, but that was about it.
“Wow, cool,” my little brother shouted excitedly when we got to the bottom, “an ant hill!”
“They’re big ants, too! Let’s kill them!” One of my cousins began jumping up and down-thrilled. My little brother put some of the big black ants on rocks and began tossing them in the cement gutter. My cousin did the same thing.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t there yet when they decided to do this. I jumped into the gutter and started walking towards them. That was the worst possible decision I could have made at that time. Suddenly, something hard hit my head.
“Ow, ow, ow!” I kept screaming over and over again pressing my hand to the spot where the rock had hit me. My cousins and brother were just standing staring at me wide eyed. Their eyes were so wide I thought pop right out of their skulls. While I was trying to figure out what they were staring at, I decided to take my hand off my head. There was blood all over my hand and gushing from my forehead. Right then, I started to feel pain. I finally realized that my cousin had thrown a rock high in the air, toward the gutter, and I was in the way when the rock came down and hit my forehead. Once I put it all together, I panicked, “Oh my, God!” I tried to carefully run up the hill to my house.
When I was half way up, I took another look at my hand. There was even more blood on it! I started crying because the blood scared me and my head was throbbing with pain. I kept running.
A few seconds later, I looked at my hand again. Now, not only was my hand covered in blood, but it was dripping down to my elbow! I began screaming, because by then I was freaking out. I kept on thinking, “Oh my, God! Oh my God! I’m gonna get stitches!” Once I got to the top of the hill, I ran into my house screaming and crying.
Moments later, my older brother came rushing down the stairs raising his voice above mine yelling, “What’s going on? What happened? Why are you screaming?” I showed him my hand and head. His eyes got really wide, “Oh my, God! Go upstairs and wash it off! I’ll call Mom!” When I was in the bathroom, I heard my brother talking on the phone. “Mom, you better get home quickly! It’s an emergency!”
My aunt, uncle, and my parents were at the checkout point at a grocery store. They had to leave the groceries there and rush home.
About ten minutes later, my mom came dashing through the door and ran upstairs. She immediately sterilized the gash and bandaged it with gauze. Thankfully, I did not have to go to the emergency room after all. It had bled a lot, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared.
After I was bandaged and cleaned up, I found my cousins and younger brother upstairs watching a movie. When I walked in, their attention quickly went from the movie to me. They made sure I was okay.
“I’m so sorry,” my cousin said over and over again.
Since then, whenever my cousins come to visit, and we are playing outside on the slope, I always remind everyone, “NO THROWING ROCKS!!”