By Will Strouth

When I was 4 years old, my family was going to move from Georgia to Texas. We had moved out of our house to stay in a motel somewhere near Robinson Airforce Base. I was wearing a red shirt and blue jeans while I played on the playground.

Suddenly this bigger kid started acting scary and walking toward me. He was about 8 years old and had long brown flat hair. I think he ironed it. Anyway, he kept saying over and over "E.T. phone home." I was up 6 feet high on this red and yellow playground toy. There were two slides, a firemans’ pole, and some metal steps on it. It didn’t have much of a smell. The big kid was walking towards me. He gave me a really creepy feeling. I was annoyed and I wanted him to just leave me alone. I got very angry with the bigger kid, because he was blocking the stair behind him, so I couldn’t get down.

Suddenly, I fell backwards onto the ground between the ladder and the fireman’s pole. The ground was covered with this brown tree bark that smelled like wood. Falling that far felt really weird. It was like I was in space; I was weightless for a second.

When I finally landed I bit my tongue really hard and it started to bleed. It was very quiet. I looked way up and saw the clear blue sky. My mom who was sitting on a bench talking to that big kid’s mom jogged over. I was just laying there because I couldn’t get up, I felt so weak.

When my mom saw the blood she got really frightened. She was afraid that my spine was broken, so she had someone else call for an ambulance, while she stayed with me. I thought I was going to die, because there was blood all over my clothes and my mom looked so worried.

When the ambulance came, the siren was really loud and the flashing red lights were very bright. The emergency medical technicians came and taped me to a wooden backboard with 1" wide masking tape for the ride to the hospital. My mom said that it was the first time since I was born that I actually stopped wiggling. They used a lot of tape and it smelled like maple syrup; maybe that’s why.

My mom and my two-year-old brother got to ride to the hospital in the ambulance with me. It felt like they drove as fast as they could, way over 100 miles an hour, to the hospital where they ran me into the emergency room on the stretcher. It was an exciting ride, but my brother was very worried about me. He watched everything, but did not talk at all. In fact my mom said that he did not speak again until late that evening.

The nurse called my Dad at work. He was real mad because he had to leave work. He rushed over to the hospital on his lunch hour. The emergency room people took me to have my back x-rayed. I was there, still taped to the board when my Dad finally got to the hospital.

Fortunately none of my bones were broken, but my back was sore. The doctor was surprised. He said he hadn’t seen any falls from that high where people were NOT hurt. He said my guardian angel must have been watching over me.

I was relieved that I wasn’t paralyzed. I thought about being able to walk, to feed myself, and to ride my bike, and I felt good that I could do those things. The next day my family started on our trip to Texas as if nothing unusual had happened.