I’m sort of listening to Matt, sort of watching the road go by on the cross-country late bus. Matt just looks live a T.V. character on mute as I think to myself, ‘Wow, if running at cross-country practice was hard today, wait until we start to do the real challenging stuff’.

“Today,” I hear Matt say

“What?” I ask

“Do you want to come over today?” he asks again in a kind of annoyed voice.

“Oh, uh, yeah sure,” I reply, “Let me call my mom.”

There it was, that little ‘You want to come over today’. Sure it’s a small sentence, but it played a big part in the events that occurred that day. That was the sentence that if it were never said, I never would have broken my elbow that day.

So I called my mom and she announced it was all right to go over so I skipped my stop and waited for Matt’s stop to come up.

When we arrived at Matt’s house we slowly jogged inside and scarfed down a small snack. After I finished eating Matt and I decided to go jump on the trampoline. I jog back outside with my legs still cramping, wondering why I’m still going on the trampoline with my legs in this state. I start to jump on the trampoline with Matt. Matt’s neighbor saw us jumping and asked if he could jump with us too. Matt agreed so we all started jumping together, occasionally double bouncing each other to make them go flying.

I suggest to Matt that we should play the game I concocted a few weeks ago. He thought that was a great idea so we start to teach Matt’s neighbor how the game works. The way you play the game is everyone jumps three times all at the same time. On the third jump everyone leaps into the middle with their eyes closed and lands on their butts. What happens is someone is bound to get double bounced. When it happens to you it feels amazing and cool, like you’re a majestic bird flying through the air.
After we finish doing that I start to goof around and do flips and barrel rolls, stuff like that. Then something weird happens when I jump and I fly into the air at an awkward angle. At the angle that I’m at I can choose to land on my head or on my arm.

Then time freezes and images start flowing through my head, memories of watching people in pain on T.V. and always grabbing my arm or leg like it was actually happening to me and I would think in my head and try to imagine how much it hurt to be them. Now I start to think that I’m probably going to figure out in the next few seconds. Then one final image pops into my mind and it was I on the trampoline, in pain, holding my arm. Then I start to feel the sensation of falling down and I snap back to reality.

What happened next was kind of weird. I don’t remember actually hitting the trampoline, just coming towards it, it was like I blacked out for half a second and then woke back up on the trampoline with my elbow hurting, Matt was running inside to get his dad, and looking at this scenario I knew I was in for some bad news.

After a few minutes I recover and I walk back inside and plop myself on the couch, but that was a bad idea because plopping didn’t agree with my elbow and it felt like a bomb went off inside my elbow and I winced with pain. Then Mr. Coppola and Matt came down and Mr. Coppola asked if I could move my fingers and I could, so we didn’t think I broke anything. Then Mr. Coppola walked upstairs to call my mom so me Matt started talking. He told me that my arm made a loud crack when it hit the trampoline and that he thinks it’s probably broken even though I can move my fingers. This made me look at my elbow again. It was huge and puffy, it was bright red, and it looked like it was getting bigger.

In a few minutes my mom arrived and she took me straight home with a pillow supporting my still hurting elbow. When I got to my house I didn’t even get a chance to go inside. My mom looked at my elbow one time and immediately decided to bring me to the hospital and get it checked out.

My mom and I arrive at the hospital and go to the front desk. I decide to go sit in the waiting area to let my elbow rest. In a few minutes my mom came over and said it would be a half hour wait. This gave my mom time to call my dad and tell him to come to the hospital with Kylie, my sister. My dad arrived in a few minutes with Kylie and we all started waiting together with my mom explaining to my dad and sister what happened.

“Looks like it’s broken,” the doctor said to my family and I, “And it’s the worst I’ve seen of this kind of injury, mostly because not that much people break their elbows. Looks like I’m going to need to give you a splint and, oh yeah … you’re going to need surgery.” ‘Oh god’ I think to myself, ‘I’m actually going to have to get surgery. I mean I kind of prepared myself for that answer, but I didn’t actually think it was going to happen. It just didn’t feel like real life to me, it just didn’t seem impossible.

The next day at school I got a lot of attention from my friends and everyone else. They kept asking what happened and what I did, I felt like a superstar. I didn’t even need to run in gym, which was a big plus for me. The only thing that wasn’t great for me right now was the thought of getting surgery.

The next few days were a breeze (mostly because it was the weekend). But then that dreaded Monday came, the day I have to have surgery. I didn’t go to school that day and I wasn’t aloud to eat that day either because it would most likely make me throw up after the surgery.

When I got to the hospital to have surgery I immediately had to change clothes and was then put into a chair and I had to meet my doctor. He was nice, he told me not to worry, and surgery isn’t that bad, everything will be fine. That didn’t really do much though because that’s what everybody says when you’re about to do something dangerous. Then I was wheeled into the surgery room and was put on an operating table. They gave me a shot and some laughing gas and all I remember is counting down from 10 and only getting to 7.

I wake up in the same chair I was in when I was meeting my doctor before and I immediately feel dizzy and can barely control where my head goes. Then I was given some toast and some ginger ale to help my raging stomach ache. When I started feeling better my mom and I started walking down to our car. We drove home with me still drinking ginger ale and burping like I was drunk. We got home and I ‘walked’ down the stairs to go lie down on the couch. When I finally made it to the couch I lied down and thought ‘Man, so that’s what the people on T.V. go through’

Breaking my elbow has definitely changed me a lot. Now whenever I do something slightly dangerous I always take caution because I really don’t want to go through that whole episode again. Now I know why parents always tell kids to be careful and always take caution when doing dangerous stuff and never stand near cliffs and all that stuff, well it’ll cost them money, but what they really want is for their kid to not go through what I had to go through the time I broke my elbow.