I was always told by my parents and sometimes even by my grandparents that I was accident prone.  It might have had some basis.  When I was in kindergarten, I had to get stitches on my forehead from running into a tree.  In grade 1, I pierced my cheek with scissors.  On my seventh birthday, I was camping in the woods with my family. On the morning of my birthday, I woke up early and decided to chop some wood for the fire.  Thirty seconds later, I expertly struck my ankle bone with the axe.  I was more in shock than in pain.  Most of all, I didn’t want to admit the fact that I did it to myself.  I instantly imagined how my dad would ridicule me all the way to the hospital if I told him the truth, and it was the last thing I wanted to hear.  Instead, I decided to go into the water.  Ten seconds later, after the initial shock had passed, the pain came up strong. I ran out of the water crying, instantly waking up my entire family.  They picked me up and took me to the nearest clinic immediately.  I never told them the cause of the accident.  They assumed that I had cut myself on some broken glass in the water.

My next accident was significantly more serious.  Stepping out of the bus, I was about to cross the street on my way home, exactly the same way as I had done it hundreds of times.  It was a busy intersection, with dozens of people getting out of that sweaty bus at once and crossing at the same light.  The ground below my feet collapsed, and the next thing I knew, I was pulling my right leg out of a broken drain grate.  I walked about three steps, then looked down at my leg.  Blood had begun to show through my jeans.  Pulling my pant leg up, all I could see was a mass of blood and a shiny white bone glittering in the midst of it.  Shock set in, and tears began to stream down my face.  Somebody picked me up and carried me to the nearest clinic, with a crowd of concerned people following behind.  Somehow the energy of the group actually lessened the stress and made me feel better.  Their love and compassion was incredible.  I still feel love for each and every one of them, when I think about it.

At the clinic, I was given water to drink and a few mild painkillers.  The doctor examined my wound.  When I fearfully asked him whether stitches would be necessary, he reassured me that they can simply glue the skin back together using a special kind of substance and told me not to worry.  Within ten minutes, my parents were there.  I was surprised to see them.  They were given the news by my best friend, who ran to my house as fast as he could to get them.

I had to be taken to a large hospital to be operated on.  There, the atmosphere was completely different.  My parents were left in the waiting room, and I was pushed through to be examined by a nurse.  After a quick glance at my leg, she told me to walk to room X where the doctor would operate.  I limped over there, thinking about how cruel and uncaring she is for making me walk.  The doctor told me to lie down on the operating bed, and immediately began injecting pain killers into my leg.  I told him that another doctor told me that the wound can be glued together without using stitches.  “No, I have to apply 17 stitches to this.”  My heart sank.  “Do you feel that?”… “Yes.” He performed several more injections.  “How about now?”  He began stitching.  I looked up once.  The sight of my leg being stitched up like that almost made me faint.  I lay back and closed my eyes.

I woke up in the hospital room during the night, covered in either cold or hot sweat. There were wet towels there, which I would put on my face periodically to cool down a little.  The towels would get warm very quickly and I would have to wet them again and again.  I hardly slept at all in that hospital, waking up multiple times every night.  I probably only slept at all because they gave me pills to knock me out.  I remember jumping down the hallway at night to go to the bathroom.  I jumped all the way there on my good leg.  I couldn’t stand the idea of pissing into a bottle.

I don’t remember how the days passed or how many days I spent in the hospital.  I was asleep or in fever most of the time.  It must have been about nine days before I was allowed to go home.  A little later, the stitches were removed.  Then, the wound got infected and would not heal for nearly three months.  I could walk and play just fine, but there was still pus in the wound.  Sometimes, I contemplated the possibility of losing my leg.

One of my great uncles once walked a distance of 20 kilometers in dirty boots without wearing any socks.  He developed an infection on his foot, and eventually, one of his toes had to be amputated.  By that time, his infection had already spread up his leg.  He had to visit the doctor again, and the doctor called for his leg to be amputated at the knee.  The operation led to its own complications, and his leg had to be operated on yet another time.  It was removed at the hip.  I knew for a fact that little infections can lead to major problems, and the possibility of losing my leg came up in my mind again and again.  Fortunately, the wound eventually healed and my life returned back to normal.

The accident left a major impression on my psyche.  Sometimes, even years later, the scene of the accident would recur in my mind.  I would see my flood stained jeans, the gleaming white bone, and the crowd of people around me.  It brought a tremendous sadness with it every time it came.  For several years afterwards, I would avoid wearing shorts, because other kids would ask me about the scar.  I did not want to remember the event or talk about it with anyone.  Then, the memory somehow emptied itself and dissociated from my emotions.  The scar became just a scar and the accident was just an event.