Flying Second Graders
When I was younger, we always had a skating unit in gym class. I was never quite good at skating, but I was getting there. I could step one foot over the other and turn corners, albeit not too gracefully. I knew how to fall properly and had all the necessary safety gear, that being wrist guards and nothing else. We always had this same exact skating unit until I finally got to middle school and they got rid of it. In its stead we got other lackluster units where the hockey kids couldn’t show off as much, save for the floor hockey unit.
While still in my elementary years, I was in gym class, the skating unit, and was a bit shaky but still could skate without being on the carpet. In the center of the gym there was always a carpet for the kids who couldn’t skate as competently as others, and I had just graduated from needing it. I was making my laps, falling here and there, but nothing too serious. I was a second grader, an age of kids that are renowned for being very spry and hardy little humans. While skating, I would go down a side, cross over my feet, wobble a little, and keep going, repeating this action for a half an hour until we had to struggle to take off the skates.
On the third day of this unit, I was going through my routine when I saw that I was catching up with a kid named Frank. A special thing about Frank was that he was in a wheelchair. He was in front of me, being pushed by another child on roller skates. There were layers to one’s route that showed their competency. As previously mentioned, when you weren’t very good or not confident, you rode on the carpet. There were three surrounding layers: the people who didn’t need the carpet but wanted to be next to it just in case, the people who could skate fairly well but not that fast (this is where I was), and the hockey kids on the final, outside, layer. Frank was in the layer next to the carpet being pushed by someone else. They were having fun, and so was I. For a reason unbeknownst to me, the kid pushing Frank decided to venture out into the next layer with little regard to anyone around them. I just so happened to be right behind them and got cut off like a terrible driver trying to merge into traffic. Not wanting to hit the kid in the wheelchair, I forgot everything to do with falling safely and opted to just fall. An ear-screeching scream rang out in the gym as I, an eight-year-old, crushed my ankle on the ground. Crying and screaming, the gym teacher came over to me and checked how I was doing. I failed to mention before, but I lied a lot as a child. I'm unsure as to why; I think I just wanted to sound cool, but that really came to bite me in this situation. Still crying, I was helped to the side, where I sat watching everyone else continue skating.
Towards the end of the class, the gym teacher, not believing me for good reason, made me get up, walk to the carpet, and attempt to skate again. I cried but still did it. After gym I went to the nurse's office, where she gave me an ice pack and told me to continue with my day and that I would be fine. When I lied, I often lied to get into the nurse's office, so my reputation with her was not very high. I went through the day crying every time I stood up. Luckily one of my friends at the time helped me walk around, offering her arm as a crutch for me to put my weight on. At the end of the school day, I went to my mom's car and hopped in, only to immediately start crying again and screaming that my ankle hurt. She took off my shoe and looked at my ankle that was all the colors it shouldn’t be. Feeling validated by the hue of my ankle, I screamed even more. My mom helped me get home, but still, rightfully, didn’t believe me that anything was seriously wrong. I stayed home the next few days until my mom finally caved in and took me to the doctor. There, they gave me a brace and told me to wear it and go back to school, which I did.
After a while of it not getting better, we decided to go to a different doctor and get x-rays done. There it was revealed that it wasn’t just a bad sprain but that I had actually fractured it, and I should have been wearing a walking boot and crutches instead of my flimsy little brace. I was out of school for a little while afterwards, but at some point I needed to go to school and pick up all my missing work. Once there, the gym teacher came up to apologize to me; she genuinely felt terrible that she didn’t believe me, and the crutches and walking boot only rubbed salt into the wound. I never blamed her; I never blamed anyone, actually, because I could understand why they never believed me. Thanks to this incident, though, I got to skip running the mile that year and wasn’t required to go outside during recess because it was too icy for someone in a walking boot.
Hello! My name is Lilian (Lily) Filand and I am an 11th grader at Saint Peter High School. Normally I like to write short stories with some sort of twist or ambiguous endings that keep the reader questioning, but also find joy in writing the occasional comedic story.