As a kid, my summer nights consisted of sitting outside with my parents enjoying the stickier-than-melted-popsicles Ohio weather.  I could always be found in my front yard, plucking leaves from the emerald green hydrangea bushes and making “tacos” with the waxy leaves and an assortment of mulch, flowers, grass, or whatever I could pick up in that moment.  “That’s delicious, Lou!” my dad would always reassure to me after he “ate” whatever I whipped up for him.  I also had an outlandish love for timing myself.  I would persuade my dad to watch me slowly, yet steadily, scamper from the road on our hushed street to the edge of our garage attached to our brick house.  With each dash I strived harder and harder to beat the time of the run before. 

One particular day, as a challenge, I decided to bolt from the road to the door inside of the garage.  I ambled out to the edge of the stone driveway and took a profound breath.  “Are you ready?” I wailed to my dad.  I began my dash, my five-year-old short, chunky legs burning more than marshmallows over an open fire while clambering up the path with no intent of slowing down.  I reached the garage and instead of hitting my own brakes, I kept going.  I thrusted my arms out in an attempt to halt myself when suddenly, I went a scant farther than expected.  A blaring crash occurred, and that was when I realized that I just smashed both of my hands through the glass door leading into the house.  Frozen from shock, I stood on the step with my arms still extended.  I couldn’t believe it.  I couldn’t believe I just put my hands through the glass.  Looking down, crimson blood dripped profusely off of my skin like water from a leaky faucet and onto the cream tiles and rusty brown doormat inside.  “Lindsay, why did you do this?” questioned my dad as he scurried over to me.  I had nothing to say other than, “Well, my brain forgot to tell me to stop.”  We scrambled inside over the shards of broken glass, leaving a trail of blood throughout the home.  After getting a bath towel wrapped sturdily around the wound, Dad declared, “We are going to Urgent Care immediately.” 

We slipped into his truck and embarked on the less than two minute drive to the hospital just around the corner.  Dad and I entered the waiting room, and immediately the kindhearted nurses took us to a patient room that smelled heavily of cleaners.  Apparently it wasn’t evident what had happened, so my dad explained that I ran into the glass door and put both of my arms fully though it.  The nurses peeled off the blood soaked towel only to see my left wrist fileted open from the glass door.  The doctor could see every tendon and muscle in the gash on my wrist.  He told us that I missed losing function of my fingers (from the glass piercing the tendons) by centimeters. 

My mom arrived around thirty minutes later, rushing from an important meeting to get there as soon as possible.  The only words she could manage to get out were, “Oh my,” because the sight of her baby sliced open caused her to become faint immediately.  After escorting her from the room, the doctor numbed all the cut areas and began to suture them up.  My underarm had a small cut, and the stitching of it made me giggle. (I was extremely ticklish)  I emerged from the incident with eighteen stitches lacing up my wrist, three stiches intertwined under my armpit, and numerous stiches covering my knuckles like jet black baby spiders on a web. 
Fast-forward twelve years later to present day, I still have a three inch long scar engrained on my wrist and an inadequate nub of skin under my arm where glass somehow managed to slice.  This didn’t stop me from ever racing myself, but thankfully my brain didn’t “forget to tell me to stop” again.