My childhood best friend and I were not the brightest young fellows. We would play normally like other kids, but eventually, we just found the things we were playing with to be boring. We would play with wheels of broken scooters and Nerf guns with tacks on the ends of the bullets. There was one time there were probably 50 leftover sodas from a party and we just decided to throw them all outside because we liked the sound when they burst.

This was a normal summer day when I was around 7 or 8, I woke up and was bored after watching Yugioh so I asked my mom if my friend could come over. I can't really remember why but who needs a reason to see their friends? My mom and his mom have been friends since before we were born so it was like a double hangout. Of course, them also being friends, my friend and his mom were over in no time and we were right into our shenanigans. We got onto the PlayStation and started playing Black Ops One and not to toot my own horn but he couldn't compete with me and ended up getting mad. So we decided to go get all of my Nerf guns, swords, etc. to have a real-life Call of Duty mission. We were in the backyard going through this pre-planned “mission” we had laid out, and after that we got bored.  

After our last mission, we were just sitting on the back patio bored. I remember we would sit in these big metal deck chairs and mess with the weird squishy orange things that kinda look like brains that fall from trees. We were just talking and probably messing with ants at the same time, but that evolved into messing with loose boards on the deck. Then I went over to the other side of the deck and found an exposed nail. I had flip-flops on at the time and I really don't know why but I wanted to see the nail go through them. So I stepped on it just enough to poke through then said “Hey Tommy come look at this”, and did it a few more times. He then asked how and I just said “Step on it”, so he walked over and stomped on it and the nail went straight into his foot. He screamed like a banshee as soon as he did it, and all that was going through my mind was “Why would he do that?”. Then our moms looked out from the kitchen window that could see the backyard and rushed out and brought us inside. They asked us what happened and I whimpered out “I was just stepping on a nail to poke it through my flip flop, and Tommy wanted to try but he just stomped on it” thinking I was going to be in trouble but our moms laughed at us.  

After the panic of my friend being impaled, and both of our moms patched him up, he and his mom probably left for the hospital but being young I thought they just went home. This friend and I got into much more after this but this day has stuck with me throughout my life. Even though the story doesn’t seem to have a lesson, this day taught me to always be clear with the directions I give people. I worry that what I requested may not be done correctly or that in this case you can get hurt.