Things I Was Wrong About

Things I Was Wrong About, Vol. 3: I Don’t Need Any Help

Independence runs fiercely deep in my family. The ability to shrug off pain and keep going is a virtue valued by many, including those whom I love. I remember one time (of several such instances) when my dad and I were working together clearing some brush, using a wood-chipper. Let me assure you, this story doesn’t end as badly as you might think it does, as the wood-chipper plays a secondary role. Anyway, as my dad was feeding a tree branch into the chipper, the teeth grabbed it and sucked it in quicker than he was anticipating. Some of the auxiliary branches of the main branch were rapidly pulled forward, slicing across his face. He grunted and put his hand over his eye. I looked to see blood seeping between the fingers of his gloved hand. I had no idea what the severity of his injury was and I stopped to ask if he was ok. He responded by vigorously rubbing the blood out of his eye, revealing a gash across his eyelid. The gash quickly filled with blood again, which he wiped again. Then, instead of cleaning the wound and getting some medical attention, he just picked up the […]

Things I Was Wrong About, Vol. 1

Things won’t get better I’ve experienced darkness in my life. Deep darkness. When I was a kid, I was in boy scouts. One time, on a day trip, our scout leaders took us to an abandoned mine shaft. I know, this story has a very promising beginning, just like the last one. Because we didn’t know anything, and apparently neither did our leaders, we wandered into the mine shaft, deeper and deeper into the mountain. Our way was lighted by an actual torch, not a flashlight or lantern. One of our leaders, who just happened to be the one holding the torch and also happened to have the most severe case of ADHD of the bunch of us, thought it would be a funny trick, once we were several hundred feet into the mine shaft, to knock the torch on the ground, extinguishing the flame. The tunnel that we were exploring had curved to the left, meaning that when the torch was gone, the entrance to the shaft was out of sight around a corner, leaving us with absolutely no light. In review, we were 12 year old kids in an abandoned mine shaft and it was so dark, we […]