The first time I receive stitches I was two.  I was at my aunt’s house because she enjoyed babysitting my three sisters, my brother and us. She didn’t own any toys because she didn’t have any kids, so I decided to climb up on a long brown couch and hop like a pogo stick. My four-year-old sister Becka found a clear ball with little bumps all over it and decided we should play a game. As a little kid, this game sounded fun. “Try not to let the ball hit the wall,” she instructed.

“Ok,” I agreed.

We started playing, and I only let her score two or three times. After five or ten minutes, we took a break to take a nice cold, relaxing, drink of blue Kool-Aid. When we finished, we went back playing. It was my turn to rack up points, and I recorded seven times. We switched and I had to keep the lead to win. She tallied two more points.  Then she threw the ball high, so I jumped to smack the ball; however, I forgot how close I stood to the edge of the couch. I took the biggest jump and hit the ball but slipped off the edge of the couch and smacked my head on the edge of the long brown coffee table. I stared rolling around, holding my head and crying like a kid not getting his way.

My older cousin rushed over to me to see if I was okay; then she raced over to the phone to call my mom. My mom explained to her that I would live. She was released from work because she told her boss that she had to take me to the hospital. When my mom arrived at the hospital, the rag on my head was as red as a rose instead of white. My mom checked me in, and when we were taken back to my room. They told us that I was going to have to get stitches. My mom stood beside me as three nurses held me down because I was so little and afraid.

“You’ll be ok,” my mom explained. “Calm Down.” I kept yelling and screaming because I thought I was dying.

The nurses tried to velcro my arm down.

“This will hold him still,” the doctor instructed.

It didn’t. I broke out of them; in fact, my mom knew it wouldn’t work. My mom continued to talk to me to calm me down. A nurse moved my mom down by my legs because the nurse thought she was in the way, and after we left, my mom told us, “I don’t like that witch of a nurse; I don’t like her.” It felt like they had given me fifty stitches in my eyebrow, but it was only three stitches. When I arrived at home, my parents asked, “Will you ever jump on a couch again?”

“Nope,” I announced, and everyone laughed. The next day when I woke up my parents teased me about jumping on the couch every time I sat on the couch.