Have you ever fell down a hill? How did it feel? Was it an embarrassing moment or did you learn some type of lesson? When I fell down the hill it was embarrassing, scary, and funny at the same time. It was a very memorable time and place when this happened.

In sixth grade, so five years ago, my grandma, my brother Marko, and sister Nina, all decided to go to our home country Serbia. That was our first time there so we were always exploring something new. We went to many several places to see family, land that we own, and other different parts of the country. The world out there is so different than here. People here cannot live without their phones or can't even go a day without using their phones. It’s almost as if they are glued to the phone like dogs when they have puppies. Over in Serbia, everyone is always outside hanging out and playing around together.

Well, one day, my grandma wanted to show us where one of our land spots was and that was also where my dad’s side of the family was from. Now imagine going through a forest, up a steep road to get to your house. This house was on top of a hill and when you looked down there was a steep hill. It was a nice day outside and we decided to go up there to have a barbeque and hangout with all of our cousins. We brought all kinds of equipment to entertain ourselves like soccer balls, and volleyballs.

  This is how the embarrassing part comes upon. All my cousins, siblings, aunts, and uncles, were playing volleyball. We were all in a circle playing keep the ball up. Unfortunately, every time someone would drop the ball, it would just roll down to the bottom of the hill. Everyone took turns to go and get the ball. Until it came my turn to go get it, everything went downhill. I was going to get the ball and all of the sudden I lost my balance and I slipped on the dry mud and fell. All I remember was rolling and rolling down the hill and I had hit my head on one of the thin trees. If the tree hand not stopped me I would of kept on rolling and going down. I was more than half way down. I remember when I stood up I couldn’t feel anything hurting and as I looked up to where everyone was they were all standing up and asking me if I was okay. 

As I started walking up the hill, slow as can be, I started to feel my legs burning. Right then and there, I felt the clear glassy tears running down my face because once they hit my mouth I could taste the salt in my mouth. It took me awhile to get up that hill because of the burning on my legs due to the steepness of the hill. As I got up closer and closer, I heard my grandma screaming, my uncle asking me if I was okay, and all my cousins, and siblings looking at me waiting for me to say something. At this point, I was up the hill and now imagine more tears coming down my eyes. My uncle sat me down and told me not to move. He went inside to get something so that he could cleanse my legs since they were all scratched up. First, he came out with water to wipe it down a little. The stinging pain was the worst thing I’ve ever felt. It was sizzling with water. Then he told me to stay still again. He went inside and came back with some Serbian moonshine which is called Rakija. He began to put that on my my legs and all I remember was that I started to cry. That burned so much, I didn’t know what to do. My grandma was helping me clean off all of the dirt from my clothes and arms. After all of that happened, I just sat down and rested for many hours because it hurt so bad. Everyone was helping me and telling me it would be okay.

Till this day I still have scars on my legs. It’s almost a funny and sad memory at the same time because although it really hurt, I can always bring that up and so can my family. While it happened, it was embarrassing and scary. Now when I refer to it, it brings back fun memories. When I see all my family that saw this happen, they always talk about it to get a good laugh out of it. It will always be brought up in family reunions. Although it was embarrassing, now I can always put a smile on every ones face whenever I see them again. This kind of embarrassment is a memory that’ll always be within our family, one that’ll never be forgotten, and a memory that will last a lifetime.