The evil play ground

As a kid I was either very accident prone or the play ground at my elementary school was out to get me. From kindergarten thru 5th grade I had a number of accidents on that play ground. Never in the school or anywhere else which is why I suspect that play ground had it out for me and/or all the kids. I'm sure if I went back there now it has changed and some of the equipment that I had gotten hurt on is probably not there anymore. They probably removed it because of my accidents. or maybe just cause it was old. Either way you're just going to have to use your imagination when I describe the equipment because I can't go back to take a picture.

The first accident I can clearly remember was in 3rd grade... I think... well that doesn't really matter. On our play ground there were 3 sets of swings. 4 swings on each set. 2 sets were to the left of the yard as you walked out of the cafeteria and one set was straight ahead. Well one day I walked out of the cafeteria determined to do some awesome swinging. Low and behold there was only... ONE... SWING... LEFT.... Straight ahead.

I started sprinting as fast as my little 3rd grade legs could go. Keep in mind, until my freshmen year in high school, I was always the smallest kid in class. As soon as I got to the swing I grabbed the chain and at the same exact time. JEFF RIFKIN grabbed the other chain.

NOOOOO!!!!! I started begging and arguing "I was here first" "please let me swing" "It's not fair" "I'm smaller than you so I should be able to swing" Kid's arguing never makes any sense. No teachers noticing this continued on for a bit. Then with one strong pull of the chain on my end and one push on Jeff's end.

BAM!

Chain to the head. Naturally I screamed. Not even thinking I was really hurt. I ran over to the play ground teacher just to tell her Jeff had hit me with the swing chain, as I approached her she grabbed my arm and rushed me inside. At this point I realize that my head was wet and saw something drip onto my pants. Blood?! Where had that come from. The teacher rushed me into the nurses office. Then I began to cry now that I had discovered I was hurt and bleeding from my head. Luckily the cut wasn't big or deep enough for me to have to get stitches but I did have to sit and wait for my mom to bring me new pants. And that's all I remember about that day.

I can't remember what age but I went to summer day camp as a kid and the park district building must have been too small so they had it in my school. One day I was playing on the jungle gym and decided I wanted to jump off the platform instead of sliding down the "fireman pole" Yeah, I was a genius. When I landed on the gravel, yes GRAVEL. My legs must have given out and my knees bent all the way. For some odd reason my mouth was one and again, BAM!

My front tooth went into my knee. I sat there stuned for a second and then pulled my mouth away from my knee. The tooth... still in my mouth, just a little loose and my knee... gushing blood. Don't remember much of that accident except for the fact that I still have the scar on my knee. I'll show it to you if you want to see it sometime! lol

The last accident I had in elementary school was in 5th grade, pretty close to the end of the school year. The whole day is pretty hazy when I try to remember it. I was playing over by this big metal slide when I heard noise coming from my this strange jungle gym thing we had. All the boys were jumping from this one bar (pull over/ pull up bar) and grabbing onto the side bar of the monkey bars. The single bar was probably 2 or 3 feet off the ground and the side bar of the monkey bars was probably only 5 feet away. So for them this was an easy task. Me being the littlest person there, and the "bravest" decided if the guys could do it I could do it too! I told them I had done it before (don't know where I got that idea from) and I climbed up onto the bar.

Everyone cheering, no one believing I could do it, but wanting me to show them I could. I jumped, held my arms out as far as I could. GRABBED THE BAR!!!!

and slipped, I didn't grab in hard enough. That's all I remember until I came out of my black out. We had gravel play grounds and I had fallen and hit my head. I woke up with a circle of people surrounding me like in the movies, asking if I was alive and trying to figure out what to do. Again for this incident, no teachers were really paying attention, other wise they would have never let me jump.

Finally, not knowing the way to properly handle head injuries my friend Bethany decided I needed to go to the nurse, which was smart thinking for a 5th grader, but you're not really supposed to move someone when they've gotten injured just in case I had hurt my neck or spine. She picked me up and began carrying me to the school. Spotting her a teacher ran over and told her she needed to put me down and I needed to walk myself to the nurse. She came with me tho.

I remember the nurse asking me all the normal head injury questions, "what's your name?" "where do you live?" "What's today?" And then she asked me if I knew my phone number, which I did. So she had me call home. My mom being a stay at home mom answered the phone. I told her I hit my head and the nurse then talked to her for a bit. She decided that it was best to just watch me in the office for a while. Then I threw up in her trash can. Layed down for a bit and decided I was good enough to go back to class. So I went back up to my classroom where everyone was watching a movie. I felt terrible, but I was determined to wait it out. I ended up throwing up in a trash can in the class too. My teacher sent me back to the nurse and she called my mom back to tell her to come pick me up.

After we got home I layed on the couch, as with any concussion I felt really sleepy. And all I wanted to do was go to sleep. My mom told me that I could sleep but she would have to wake me up every 10-15 minutes to make sure I was ok (alive). That went on for the rest of the day and then I went to bed when my mom thought it was safe.

Needless to say, I think I'm just accident prone and made poor decisions as a kid, but it's more fun to say that the Eisenhower play ground was out to get me.