*An excerpt from MARNIE'S LIFE

SPRAINING MY ANKLE

Hey, what’s up? Marnie here again, with another interesting anecdote. I was in the 2^nd grade when it happened. Apparently I remember this instance, but my folks told me I sprained my ankle and my wrists multiple times. Apparently I was a really clumsy girl. My eyesight isn’t 20/20, and I think this was some kind of warning for the future, seeing as soon after I got my first pair of awful bifocals. (I know; sounds atrocious. Believe me, they were.)

Anyway, this all started with me trying to help my mother make the house a bit neater. Since I was only seven, I decided to start small, basically with something that wouldn’t overwhelm me, (and in the off-chance that I got into trouble, that the consequences wouldn’t be so dire.) so I went into my brothers’ room. They had against the wall, (or part of it, I’ll never know….) an open closet with a series of drawers that on top had a series of shelves.

I decided that I was going to take the task of “neating” the drawers up, as I put it back then. I honestly think, I was bored, I needed something to do, and I was seven so of course the choice would have to be a stupid and dangerous one. But, being seven years old and not very logical, I went about fixing the shelves up. There were several drawer handles that I was able to climb, and they held me quite well. When I reached the fourth one, I was almost four feet off the ground, maybe more. Either way, what happened next happened just like in the movies. To slow and yet it happened all so fast.

For some odd reason I decided to look down, and I must have leaned too far, because I fell down those four feet; landing flat on my back with a major sounding crack once I got to the bottom. I totally freaked out, because for the first few seconds I couldn’t move, I think it was mostly because of fear of what my mom will do when she found out, and the other part was fear that I may have broken something big. I mean I was seven and rambunctious, but I'm no way that stupid not to think that something like this could have broken a bone or worse.

After landing on the floor with a huge CRACK, I waited with bated breath. Would my mother notice? Well, not as lucky as I thought since she asked me what happened. Like any child who did something wrong, I responded with the universal, “Nothing mommy.” My mother left it alone after that, but I had a feeling that it wasn’t over. I had no idea how right I was. Because sooner rather than later I had to make my way downstairs, (for what exactly, I don't remember) and my mother still suspicious, looks me up and down trying to figure out what I did wrong.

She looked me over and asked me why I was limping. To make a long story short, we went to the doctor, and I was instructed not to put too much pressure on that leg. We spoke to the school and arranged a system to make sure I had time to get up and down the stairs. The moral of the story, the lesson I learned, is to never make an attempt to “neat up” the shelves without a stool to back me up.