Boys

[run it, ride it]

Puh. My brother took up tame activities like computer games and Lego.

I, on the other hand... well, it all started at age two when my mother found me floating face-down in the hot tub. Apparently I wanted to learn how to swim. By age three I was already climbing trees as tall at the house. I nearly drowned in an undertow when I was five.

Had too many close calls on rollerblades and saved up for a skateboard instead. MUCH safer--you can bail. But still... my knee will never heal after that pot hole incident. At age eight I wandered off and got myself lost on an uninhabited island for seven hours.

The day my father agreed to buy me a horse, that horse threw me off three times and sent me to the hospital. This had absolutely no bearing on my still being ecstatic to own said creature. The horse has flipped on me three times and landed on me twice. I don't even remember how many concussions I'm up to. Had to get stitches in my lip last winter after I hit some sheet metal going under a doorway. Oh, and we totally got stuck in a swamp Never-Ending Story style. "Where have you been? And why are you both covered in mud?" Oh well, better than the times the horse has come galloping back to the barn without me altogether.

At age twelve I ran into a brick wall and chipped half my front tooth. When I took up fencing, I took an epee to the cheek; no, no, we weren't sparring. We thought it was a good idea to try and throw our gloves into a basketball net with our swords. I took a toenail to the same cheek sparring in Taekwondo.

I got hit by a car on my bike on my way to work at age thirteen. Turned an ankle running at night in a foreign country; I determinedly hobbled two miles on pure adrenaline before I let someone rescue me. Couldn't walk for two weeks afterward. Fell flat on my face last month for no good reason. Broke my foot moving a shelf. Broke my arm falling two feet off a couch, got a bone bruise on my knee trying to hurdle it. Fell off a treadmill last year and have bits of it permanently embedded in my calf.

The list goes on and on.

The ER staff in my university town practially know me by name. At home, both my parents work at the medical centre--good thing, too!

No, no. I am DEFINITELY the child my parents worry about.