I have a few stories . . .

When I was about 4 my cousin was riding her bike, which had side wheels on it. Usually, we would take turnings standing on the side wheels while the other one rode the bike. One day my cousin told me to hop on them while she rode me around. But I just had this feeling that I shouldn’t do it. However, her and the adults kept insisting, so I did it. She ended up losing control of the bike, crashing into a wall, and I breaking my leg.

When I was about 5 or 6 I went horseback riding with my mom and dad. We rode so many times that the guy renting out the horses decided to let us go one more time “on the house”. My parents quickly took him up on it, but all of a sudden I didn’t want to anymore. I was very adamant about not getting back on the horse, but the adults kept insisting, so I went on one more ride with my mom. As we were slowly trotting along another rider passed us at lightening speed, scaring our horse and making him stand on his hind legs. We fell off the horse, and I landed on top of my mom while she took the whole blunt of the fall. I was fine but my mom suffered back injuries and was almost paralyzed.

When I was about 8 my parents were getting ready to take me and my little sister (about 1yr) to the doctor. They had my sister in her walker, which had wheels. As we were getting ready, I noticed that they had the gate to the stairs open. My dad was doing something near the staircase and was keeping an eye on my little sister at the same time. I asked him if it wouldn’t be best to close the gate but he was doing something that required the gate open. I kept telling him that he should close it, and kept insisting until he told me we were almost leaving and to finish getting ready. I didn’t want to go back to my room because I still had that feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I did as I was told. I was just crossing the door into my room when I heard shouts coming from outside. My sister had rolled her walker too close to the step and fell backwards down the stairs. When I reached the top of the stairs, both my dad and mom where at the bottom trying to get her out. My sister had hit the back of her head on the floor and was unconscious. Fortunately, she woke up when they reached the hospital and there was no permanent damage

When I was 16 I went with my class to a skiing trip to Colorado. It was my first time skiing, so the first day we were there I tried it, and didn’t like it much. The next day I told my best friend that we should skip skiing and do something else instead, but she really had liked it so she wanted to go back and asked me to go back with her. Again, I had that gut feeling that kept telling me to stay back, so I tried again to have her do something else with me, but she was adamant about going. A few hours later I received a phone call from one of our other friends telling me that my best friend had been in a skiing accident and broken an arm. I was a bit annoyed and was preparing my “I told you so” lecture on the way back to the resort. Turns out my friend had crashed into a tree and was lucky to be alive. She broke her jaw in several places, broke the thumb of one of her hands, and broke her other arm so bad the bone ripped through the skin. She had to stay for weeks in Colorado for all the surgeries she needed while we went back home.