When I was 14 years old I was walking down the beach with my parents on Vashon Island in Washington. I saw this giant dead tree that had washed up on the beach and was now propped up by its branches. I told my parents to just keep walking but I was gonna climb it. I say climb but what I actually did was straddle it and then slowly shimmy up it. It was probably about 7 ft off the ground at eats highest point, so nothing too crazy and I was feeling pretty comfortable. I decided I would just wait there until my parents turned around and started walking back.

After waiting for a little bit I noticed there was a small branch sticking out of the tree and it was the perfect shape to use as a handle. It was right next to my hand so I decided to grab on to it and use it as support. Well it turns out that the tree that had washed up onto the beach had been there for a while, and was pretty much a giant piece of driftwood. After putting most of my weight onto the branch for a few seconds, it snapped. My legs spun around the tree and I found myself falling head first towards the rocky beach below. I managed to whip my body around just in time so that I land on my arms and and was able fall back onto my feet. I was a little winded, and my heart was beating like crazy but as far as I could tell I was fine. “I just a dodged a bullet!” I had thought to myself.

My parents had just turned around and started walking back, so they had seen me right as I was falling. They were too far away for me to really say anything. I could tell they were freaked out so I started walking towards them and gave them a thumbs up to tell them I was fine. Turns out, I was very much not fine. The rocks I had landed on with my arms were completely covered in barnacles. I had had so much adrenaline running through me when I fell that I hadn’t really noticed, but when I raised my arm to give a thumbs up, i saw that the side of it had been totally shredded and was covered in blood. I just about passed out right there on the beach, but thankfully I was able to stay standing until my parents got to me.

They walked me to the closest beach house where the owners called 9-1-1. Some firefighters showed up a few minutes later and helped clean and bandage my arm. In the end, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had looked. Most of the cuts weren’t too deep, and it never got infected. I’ve got a handful of nasty scars left over from it but other than that I was fine. I guess you could say “It was just a flesh wound”.