Friday, September 6: A story about a time you were very afraid.


I find myself pretty fortunate, especially in this respect. While I've gone through plenty of frustration in my years, I haven't had too many instances of primal, visceral fear. I think the most vivid memory I have of that is when I first visited relatives across the pond, and sustained the first major injury of my life.


This part of the family lived in a rural area in northeastern Poland, and given the distance between neighbors, the easiest way for a plucky eight-year-old such as myself to get around was by bicycle. There weren't too many spares around, but my uncle found an older one missing a pedal that I was able to use (carefully, he insisted). I jumped at the chance to finally enjoy mobility, and quickly grew used to the somewhat strange experience of biking on one pedal and one pedal spindle.


One day, I was standing behind the bike when for reasons my memory has decided weren't particularly important, the bike dropped, spindle side down, onto me. I had never noticed, but the end of the spindle was very, very sharp - sharp enough to go right through my foot between two bones. Aside from the pain, the overwhelming, irrational fear that I had was that this injury was one I couldn't heal from. Seeing clear through my foot to the ground on the other side was too much, and I was just about overwhelmed by the feeling that I'd never walk right again, or that being so far from a hospital I couldn't get proper medical care - all this against a backdrop of constant sharp pain.


My uncle arrived shortly and cheered me up pretty quickly on the way to the doctor. It turned out that there wouldn't be any permanent tissue damage because of how cleanly the sharp spindle had gone through. But for, a whole day (an eternity in kid time), I was terrified that all my family were wrong and I wouldn't be able to walk, so I avoided putting any pressure on my foot at all. Of course, my fears were overblown and within a day or two I was walking normally again, but it's one of my most memorable harrowing experiences.