Evie and the Blue Slide

 

            I was a relatively small child with a blonde bob haircut in my blue school jumper with my black Mary Jane’s. I was not the most outdoorsy eight year old in the grade but I still enjoyed recess. It was a cold and dark November day, I had my big blue warm button-down coat on to keep me warm while we forced outside for thirty minutes. I would have preferred staying indoors in the heat, but we had no choice at that age. So naturally I ran down the big hill with my friends and we decided to make our way over to the Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten playground on the left rather than the older kid playground on the right. We had the option in third grade as to which one we wanted to play on because no little kids had recess the same time as us. The smaller playground had a wooden house, some swings, monkey bars, and new addition: the blue spiral slide. This blue spiral slide was not that big, about twelve feet high with an open top and had three turns down. My friends and I started out just running around, jumping on the monkey bars, swinging on the swings, but then we finally made our way over to the new blue slide. Emma went up first; she was the fastest so naturally she got there first. At recess no one walked anywhere it was strictly running. Every child had so much bottled up energy that they felt the need to run from place to place whenever recess came around. So Emma got to the slide first, ran up the steps and slid gracefully down the slide. Madeleine and Carli decided they wanted to just stay bundled up and sit on the woodchips and watch us slide down instead. My turn was next and boy was I excited. There was always a thrill while sliding down a slide, when you reached that point of maximum acceleration right before you flew off the slide and onto the ground. But I was denied that feeling of adrenaline today, and instead I gained a newfound enemy.

 I was no stranger to this slide, I had been on multiple times since this new slide had been put in at the beginning of the year. So I ran up the steps and took a step onto what I thought was the slide, lifted my other foot to sit down and in that instant I fell off the top of the slide. Instead of stepping onto the slide, I had actually placed my foot over the slide into the air and when my other foot was lifted I quickly launched off the slide. Three flips later I landed on my back in front of Carli and Madeleine on the woodchips. My head just missed the end of the slide, preventing me from a severe concussion most likely. I stood up, not remembering the fall and looked up at the slide wondering how I had gotten there. I then looked at the hysterically laughing Carli, Madeleine and Emma and they continued laughing as they walked me to my teacher, who then took me to the nurse. That dreaded slide, to my dismay, was never removed from the playground, but I never went on that slide again. The slide was no longer my friend, but rather my eight year old self looked at it with fear and panic as I recalled my last encounter with this devil.

 

 

Emma and the Shattered Glass

 

            It was a cool August night in Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard. The sun was setting, yet the porch light and the candles brought just enough light to make out the many people on the Brumbaugh’s porch. Three families came together for a crab bake, the Brumbaughs, Marinos, the Wredes, and the additions of me and Carli. Everyone had just finished eating and the parents were sipping cocktails and drinking beer, wandering in and out of the house through the glass sliding door. Dads were primarily roaming from the porch table to the house, trying to get the score of the baseball game while keeping conversation outside. The mom’s were sitting at the kitchen table cleaning up from dinner and breaking out the dessert. The younger kids, ages 12 and under, were inside playing cards while watching TV in the den, while us older kids were outside in the backyard. Our innocent game of running around playing tag and throwing things at each other turned into a game of hostage. Chris, Emma, Carli, Sander, Jojo and I teamed up against Will, who was the youngest of the older kids, and decided to secretly grab him and tie him to a chair with the purpose of throwing him into the lake that was fifty yards away. Jojo and Chris grabbed his legs while Sander struggled to keep his flailing arms under control. Emma ran to the porch to grab the chair while Carli and I looked around for anything that could tie him up. We successfully found a rope, a jacket, and a jump rope lying in the playpen of a backyard. The boys forced a struggling Will into the chair and held him there while us girls started tying. We started first with his feet together and then used the jump rope to tie his arms. As we finished wrapping the jacket around his chest and attaching it to the chair we realized we needed more equipment if we were going to successfully throw him into the lake. So we sent Emma to run into the house for more rope, she was the quickest and Will was becoming more persistent in his attempts to escape. Will’s chair was facing the porch and we were all standing behind and next to Will trying to hold him back while yelling at Emma, “Faster! Faster!” Emma raced up the steps onto the porch and BOOM! crashed right through the glass sliding door. Whoever cleaned it must have done a great job because Emma did not doubt for a second that the door was open until she was on the ground face first inside the house surrounded by glass. Emma’s entire body, not arms or hands, had so much momentum as she sprinted to the house that it completely shattered the glass door. We all immediately forgot about Will and laughed because we did not think it was possible that little Emma could have broken an entire door in one second. Emma was not injured, a few scratches here and there, but her injuries were lost to those around. Everyone was strictly focused on the broken glass and the fallen Emma lying on the ground halfway in the house, halfway on the porch. Needless to say for the rest of the trip we constantly reminded Emma whenever she left a room to check to make sure the door was open.