“Are you alright?” some neighborhood kids asked walking by. They were watching me clutch my leg in pain. I saw blood oozing through my pants, I knew I had a serious problem.
The day began pleasantly—when I woke up there was snow on the ground and school was cancelled! Ashley, my friend who lived down the street, called and asked if I wanted to go sledding. I eagerly agreed and threw on my snow pants and winter jacket and headed out into the winter chill. It was a perfect day to sled. The ice that had formed on the street overnight was perfectly hidden after the early morning flurries.
When I arrived at Ashley’s house she was still getting ready, so her mom made me a cup of hot chocolate while I waited. The warmth of the chocolate and milk warned me up and made me anxious to get going. As soon as Ashley was finished, we headed outside into the bitter cold to play in the snow. We built a snowman and a snowball fight-- everything you do on a snow day, but after all the playing we decided to go sledding.
The sledding hill is actually the street in front of my house. The conditions were perfect—slippery and fast! The speed of the sled and the wind in our faces made us want to go all day. After several hours of sledding however, the soft snow began to get worn away, revealing the slick icy street underneath. On the last run, we hiked up as usual, huffing and puffing. When we finally reached the top, all I wanted was to sit down and enjoy the ride, but it didn’t turn out to be that enjoyable. I started out on my stomach, legs in the air. Halfway down the hill, the sled began to veer. Before I knew it, the sled was spinning and I was totally out of control! I didn’t know how I was going to get the sled stopped. Before I had time to think, I was stopped quite abruptly by a brick column mailbox. I was flung from my sled and landed on the ice cold ground. That’s when I felt the pain in my left leg, grabbed it and began rocking back and forth. “Are you ok?” some neighborhood boys asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks,” I stuttered. Ashley soon joined me at the bottom of the hill. She jumped to her feet when she noticed I was hurt.
“I’ll go get your parents!” She stumbled as she tried to run up the slippery hill. A few minutes later she arrived back with a neighborhood mom who was watching her kids sled.
“What happened honey?” she asked.
“I think I hit my leg on the mailbox,” I replied. She assured me everything would be all right and that she would call my parents, but that was before we lifted up my pant leg. We lifted it up to see a three inch wide gash right below my knee all the way to the bone. I could see cut skin that had fallen into the gash. It was so disgusting that the mom who had helped me threw up after I left. Once I saw this, I began to panic. “What is going to happen? I’m gona have to get stitches aren’t i? I’ve heard they hurt! I don’t want to get stitches!”
“It’s okay, you’ll be fine,” the mom assured me, but I was already in tears. She had called my parents and they were on their way down. A crowd had already formed, when my dad pulled up in his car. “I think she needs to go to the hospital…” the friendly mother told my dad. He glanced at the gash in my leg, and agreed that I would definitely need stitches. He then picked me up, being careful not to bump my leg and placed me in the car.

As we pulled away I saw the bloody stain left on the snow. The people who had gathered to watch slowly moved on. At the hospital the doctor confirmed that I did indeed need stitches. It turns out that twenty stitches don’t hurt too badly when you are hiding under your mom’s arm the whole time. It was actually more painful to look at the wound, then to have it stitched up. The feeling of flying down the hill with the wind in my face will never again have quite the same appeal.