Every Saturday morning for 10 weeks I had basketball at 10:00 in the morning. It was the first day of Christmas Break and the Clarkston Wolves Varsity basketball players coached our games. I was 8 years old at the time and we were on our 4th week. The 3 weeks before, we had just practiced, and now, this was our first game. I was very excited to finally play in a game. Practicing gets boring after a week or two, so everyone just wanted to play.
The point guard started dribbling the ball down the court. He had black shorts with a grey shirt on. His team was the grey team and our team was blue so we had a blue shirt on. The Clarkston Wolves mascot was painted on the middle of the floor. I had to guard the point guard, so I got ready at about half court. He was going full speed and was trying to go to the right of the basket because he is right handed. The defender is supposed to make the player with the ball go to the opposite side he wants to. This can make him get uncomfortable and cause him to make a turnover. So I turned my body so my left foot was farther up than my right. It forced him to go left. He stopped dribbling at the key and took a jump shot. It was really high up in the air. When it hit the rim, it bounced back to us, and we both went up for the ball. I grabbed it before him, but he was up in the air too. As we were coming down, his arms came down with him. His elbow hit me in the face.

It made a part of my face around the eyebrow just split open. Someone yelled, “He’s bleeding!” I had a huge open cut. There was blood all over. The pain in my head was unbearable. I had tears in my eyes. The varsity coach came over and brought me to the trainer’s room.

A couple of the players came in and asked, “Are you okay?”

Obviously I said “Yes.”  I didn’t want them to feel like I was a baby and I was scared of getting hurt. They also showed me some of their scars that they got when they were about my age. One of them was getting surgery in a couple days on their lower part of their hand, so that made me feel a lot better. I asked the coach, “Will I get stitches or will the doctor be able to glue it up?” When I was about three, I hit a glass and it fell on my foot and it shattered, and I had a little cut on my foot, and the doctors were able to use this stuff that was called glue, but it wasn’t like the stuff we use at school. So I thought maybe the doctor could use that.

But, the coach said, “Absolutely not, that cut is very bad and it will require stitches.” I have never had stitches before in my whole life! I was a little nervous and scared at the same time.

My mom wanted to just get this over with fast, so she called my aunt. My aunt is a doctor and one of her friends was at their office. No one usually works on a Saturday, so I got lucky. We went to the doctor and unfortunately I had to get stitches. I never got them before in my life. He numbed it and didn’t tell me how many I needed at first. I just layed down and after about 15 minutes, he was done. I couldn’t believe it. It actually wasn’t very bad. After he finished, he told me he put 10 stitches in.

I was really lucky to get the cut where it happened. I got the cut in my eyebrow, so unless someone knows that it is there, no one will notice. I wouldn’t say this was a great experience, but it definitely was a good to go through. A lot of people I know have gotten stitches before in their life. And this was just something to add to my life stories for in the future when I’m telling stories about my childhood.