An Essay

Just One More Try

                I used to be the kind of guy that always wanted one more try. I would do it all the time in almost everything I did. I did it during sports, video games, and drawing etc. When I look back on it, the habit should have ended a lot earlier than it did.

                The moment it should’ve ended was in an accident that I call the ‘Altona Hill Neck Fold Epidemic.’

                I was at the Altona nature pond hill with my friend Bryan when it all went down. We had been snowboarding there for quite some time already and my mom called from the bottom of the hill saying that it was time to go. So, Bryan started his way down the hill.

                I stood up fast interrupting  him and said,                               

                “Hey, just one more try.”

                I turned my board downhill and slid towards the ramp that held the turnout and future of my ‘one more try’ decision. I hit the ramp fast, leapt of the edge. Weightless and helpless I was in the air, my feet to the sky and my body doing an accidental flip. I was considerably terrified.

                I soon came down from the air to land on my neck and have the wind get knocked completely out of myself. I stumbled around in the snow, worrying that my life would end at the tender age of ten. It was at that moment and the moments after that I could’ve realized my ‘one more try’ addiction was too deadly to continue. I realized and concluded nothing. I guess that sometimes a person needs something more obvious than a nearly broken neck to make them rethink their decisions.

                It was the spring of my grade eight year when I learned my lesson. My mom was taking my sister to her baseball game in Morden and she offered to take me to and a friend to the skatepark there. I had soccer practice that day but my commitments to the team were weak so I skipped out easily.

                I brought my friend Brody along with me and we started skateboarding as soon as we got there. We got bored at the skatepark and we went to find street spots. We found a stair set in which I got cheered on by a drunk guy to kickflip it, I did. Feeling happy but also very tired we made the cross town trip back to the skatepark.

                I had been thinking of boardsliding a certain rail at the park but I wasn’t too sure. I already had a bad history with skating rails. The first time I ever tried sliding a rail in my life I landed on my gut and choked for air, and the other famous moment was when I fell forward off of one and knocked half of my front tooth out. These moments were in the back of my mind but I blotted them out and decided to try the trick anyways.

                I tried to boardslide the rail twice and failed. Before I knew it Brody’s undiagnosed A-D-D kicked in and he started saying that we should go watch the end of my sisters baseball game.

                “I’m tired and thirsty man,” he complained

                I tried to avoid his notions.

                “C’mon man,” he exclaimed, “let’s buy some drinks and go home.”

                “Ok, Ok,” I answered, “just one more try.”

                He slowly walked back to his filming position, held up his iPod and gave me the go ahead to attempt the trick. I rode up to the rail rather slow, in my mind I knew I wasn’t going to land the trick but I went for it anyways, not fearing that I would get hurt. When I placed my board on the rail to slide it stuck instantly, I worried for an instant but began to do a routine bail. My right arm went out as instinct to brace my fall, but it instantly felt weird.

                I stood up faster than ever before and held my right arm carefully. I looked down in disbelief and saw my arm had a slight ‘s’ shape near the wrist.

                “Dude, I think I just broke my wrist!” I muttered, panicking.

                “Actually?” he responded

                I no longer had anything to say, my eyes pondered the offset shape of my arm. Sitting down on the grass a stranger came to me,

                “That was a pretty bad fall man.”

                “Uh, yeah, I think I might have broken my wrist.” I explained

                “Yeah, it looks bad.”

                And at that moment after my ears rang loud and caused me to go temporarily deaf. I sat looking at the stranger and Brody speak, not hearing a single word. When my hearing came back I stood up and tried but failed to lift my skateboard with my gimp arm. Things were getting serious and I was scared pale. I knew I had no chance of walking back to the baseball diamonds so we hitched a ride with the strangers’ friend.

                Tom Hamm was his name. I hardly knew him at all but it was a desperate time. He explained to me that I looked very pale and that my wrist was definitely broken. I didn’t want to believe him but every part of me knew he was true. He dropped us off at the diamond and my voice shook as I thanked him.

                I spilled the news to my mom as soon as I saw her. For some absurd reason I thought she would be mad at me. She wasn’t, instead she was quite helpful. She asked a nearby mom who claimed to be a nurse to look at my wrist.

                “Nope, not broken.” Said the Lady

                For the shortest moment I had hope, false hope. My mom drove me and Brody to the hospital and after about two hours of waiting and a couple strange faces I was given the news. Greenstick fracture was the medical term. Broken is the known term. It wasn’t the wrist though, it was just above.

                The doctor mentioned it was the best break that a person could have, I failed to see the enthusiasm in it. Soon the nurses gave me a ghetto cast and sent me home.

                I lay in bed that night confused, angry and sad. It would be over a month until I stepped on a skateboard again. I often wondered what it would’ve been like if I had gone to soccer practice. Was this my punishment for not going? Some sort of karma trip? Or was it just meant to happen, an, everything happens for a reason kind of thing?

                I learned a lot in the following weeks, mostly about people’s inability to say a comforting thing to a kid who broke his arm skateboarding. If I would have broken it from hockey or baseball, people would have related to it and understood. That was not the case. Most people would ask if I was going to quit skateboarding and some even said if I hadn’t quit baseball then it never would’ve happened. What the heck people? Those are basically the worst things to say.

                Finally, after five weeks of being in a cast and a surprise surgery somewhere in the middle, I was free. My arm came out of its cocoon, but much unlike a butterfly, it was not new and beautiful, it was skinny and gross.

                The whole experience taught me a few things; One being that I just shouldn’t skate rails, and two that my ‘One More Try’ addiction should end. That’s not the end of the story though, being a recovering addict from a made up disease isn’t the grand finally. It’s that I learned to take things slower, my addiction always made me live in the moment so much that I would forget about the future possibilities. I wouldn’t take time to think or take it easy, and the cast, it made me do just that. Now I have learned to stop when it is time, and take a simply more relaxed approach on everything I do in life.

                As much as I hated the pain, the cast and the break, I can ultimately be thankful.