One wouldn’t think that building bird houses could cause such trauma and damage. One couldn’t possibly fathom that it could end with a crying, bloody, mentally and physically scarred five year-old, an ambulance, and a newfound fear of ladders for a young girl.

My sister and I were at my dad’s house for the weekend. Bored and feeling creative, we decided to make bird houses for the spacious backyard, full of green trees and wildlife. The living room was centered around a massive table of tools and glue and machines to assist our project. Being five and six year-olds, we let our dad handle the dangerous jobs, while we sat gluing parts together and sanding the wood.
Whilst gliding the grainy paper against the almost smoothed wood, I felt a petulant nagging from my young body to go to the bathroom. At the time, the only bathroom was in the depths of the clammy basement, which was only accessible with a tall, fifty-foot or so ladder. I knew the rules: don’t even think about touching the ladder without someone at the bottom holding it, for it was unstable, and therefore unsafe.
I didn’t intend on being rebellious.

“Dad,” I said, looking up at him with my beady little brown eyes. But he had earplugs in to drown out the noisy work of the drill he was so intently concentrating on. He didn’t hear me.

“Dad,” I whined again, a little louder and with more urgency. He still didn’t notice me. I began tugging on the sleeve of his flannel shirt, continuing my pleas, but he was wrapped in the progress of the birdhouses.

The inevitable nag of my bladder was becoming restless; I couldn’t wait any longer. I informed my sister where I was going, and she, being the naïve child that she was, let me go without assistance. Sure, there was no one to hold the ladder while my petite and vulnerable body would climb down foolishly, but I would be fine, I told myself. Of course I would.

I was so mistaken.

I opened the door to the basement and stared down into the abyss of darkness, then at the ladder. Starting downward, I slowly and carefully let my foot step onto the second bar while I grabbed the first bar. Two feet stable, and two hands stable. I was doing well. I confidently let my foot venture in midair, trying to find the step below me. Gravity, however, had other plans. I suppose my weight didn’t agree with the ladder in that position, and suddenly I felt a slow but sure tugging backwards. For a sheer moment, I felt as though I was flying. But the glory didn’t last long, and soon I felt the terrifying sensation of falling. The kind one would experience when there’s a huge dip after the climax of a rollercoaster, but instead of finding a safe catch at the bottom, there would be hard, cold concrete to shatter my entire body.

In the midst of the fall, everything went blank: my mind, my senses, my heartbeat. It all stopped, for that millisecond, which felt like ages, that I was falling. My body was a slave to gravity, not thinking for itself but only agreeing with whatever the heavy air had in mind for me. I first felt the twinge of pain in my elbow. Then I found myself on the floor, motionless and in a pool of tears and blood under the ladder.
Though I didn’t remember it, I must have released a heck of a scream, because my dad had finally heard me and was rushing to the door above me. Everything appeared blurry, and I could barely make out what my dad was exhorting me to do. He waved his waved his hands toward himself to tell me to push the ladder back up so he could get down. It took me a few tries, but eventually my weary pushes were enough to fling the ladder upward.

Soon my dad was at my side, asking if anything hurt and directing my sister who was left upstairs through calling an ambulance. Five minutes at the most, I lay there in a state of panic. However, I remember myself being less terrified of the fact that I had just fallen hard from a risky height onto a solid cement floor, and more so because my hand had landed in a way that it was resting in a web with a small spider crawling toward it. The ambulance showed up shortly after. As I was obliviously placed onto a stretcher, men who were strangers to me asked me questions about how I was feeling and what hurt. I noticed the most striking pain was in my left elbow, which they then proceeded to squeeze. At the time I thought that to be the exact opposite of what they should be doing with an injured arm.

Before I knew it, I was in the back of the ambulance with my mom (how did she get here so fast?), my dad, and my sister all staring at me with distressed faces. I fell in and out of consciousness as we were driven to the hospital. We later found out that I had shattered my elbow and I was put out cold for the surgery. When I woke up, I felt a heavy weight on my arm. No one had told me that there would be a bulky green cast on me, probably heavier than my petite arm itself.

The experience was overwhelming to say the least, but I gained two things from it: a newfound fear of ladders, and the knowledge that it isn’t worth risking your life to avoid peeing your pants.