I fell off a bridge.

After wrapping my arms with the hard cast the doctor said, “It should be ready to come off in about 16 weeks.” My dad cut in to clarify, “16 weeks!”

“That’s right”, the doctor responded.

“That’s like, 16 divided by 4, 4 months”, I said with a shrug.

I’d have to keep these things on for a couple months. It’s kind of exciting, I mean, I’ll even have to wear this thing to school. It’s apart of me now.

I looked over to my dad and said, “It’s just a few months”

“Yea”, he responded, but I could hear the concern in his voice.

I tried to hide my excitement as we continued to speak to the doctor, but when he said, ‘no sports’, I couldn’t help but smile. It’s probably why my Dad had to make sure he said 16 weeks. He’s definitely not as happy about it as me.

When I walked into school, the following week, I didn’t know what to expect, really. Everybody likes to act like they went through some major evolutions over the summer so they can seem cooler, but all I did was slip on a trash can. I was out walking my dog and balancing myself on random things when I saw a trash can laying on it’s side. The trash can was about 4 feet away in the field where my dog was running around. I jumped from the stone bench, I was already on, onto the trash can, and for some reason I didn’t think it would roll. I thought the dirt beneath it would absorb the pressure and I would have just stuck the landing, but that obviously did not happen. The moment my feet landed, the trash can rolled over and my feet were just swung up to where my head used to be while my arms were being crunched beneath me in order to break my fall and avoid a head injury.

I had two big blue cast wrapped around my arms and there was no way to hide them, I couldn’t even put them in my pockets. Before walking into school I saw a bridge at the playground, and came to the decision that if anyone asked how I broke my arms I would just say I fell off one of those. I mostly just expected the girls to show some concern, but that’s all. I walked into the school cafeteria and at first nobody really noticed me, which was kind of disappointing, but at the same time, nobody there really knew me yet. One of the boys that I had class with last year turned around to see me and bursted out laughing, which inspired everyone else to do the same. Whatever, thought to myself. While they were laughing I spotted one of my friends and made my way over to him. He was laughing too but it didn’t bother me, I just couldn’t laugh with everyone because I couldn’t find my own pain funny. My friend noticed that I could care less about laughing with everyone so he stopped and asked what happened, but before I could answer him, the ex-classmate who initiated the laughing came up, still laughing, slapped his hand on my shoulder and asked while still holding back his laughter,

“Bro! Ho-how the fuck you break BOTH your arms? Not one, but both of them!”

I responded quickly, “I fell.”

He was still laughing. My friend then asked, “Is that really what happened?”

“Yea, I fell off a bridge”, I said as I sat down with him. Both their eyes suddenly went wide. The ex-classmate responded, “What? Nigga you should be dead! How the fuck?”

I realized what happened and quickly corrected their assumptions, “Noooo, a playground bridge.”

They both said “Oooh” and the ex-classmate finally moved on.

As the weeks went by and I had to explain to more and more people what happened, the story became more and more corroded until it was just as embarrassing as the real story. At some point I even had to explain it to one of my teachers because someone led him to believe it was a suicide attempt. I didn’t really evolve over the summer but because it happened I finally had the chance to get away from sports, which gave me more time to spend with friends, and those two big blue casts made it pretty easy to make new friends. It’s actually the reason I met one of my best friends.