Dumb Moves II

On the east side of the house in which we were living at the time was a tree I loved to climb in. The branches seemed to grow straight out from the trunk, allowing me to climb into the tree as if I were going up a ladder. With my slight build, the branches didn’t bend much even if I got out onto the outer parts of the highest branches. As I got better and faster at climbing the tree, I relished the ability to jump from branch to branch as if I were a monkey or a squirrel. I have seen movie clips where even monkeys can fall from their perches and that is why this particular tree climb sticks in my memory. I was in the upper most part of the tree and I started to fall. Whether it was from me trying to jump from one branch to another I don’t recall. I do remember the fall. As my body flopped downward from branch to branch I tried desperately to grab hold of anything to save myself, but I had no such luck. It was as if I were a pinball and gravity was pulling me to the bottom of the machine. As I hit the lowest of all the branches, I landed on it almost squarely with my face down and I straddled it with my legs and arms. This position only lasted a split second as my body spun there on that last branch and I found myself upside down, still straddling the branch. My arms were the first to let go. Half a moment later my legs parted also and I fell the remaining few feet head first and I landed in the grass squarely on my head. Most all parts of my body had scratches from the fall as I scraped against all the branches I had fallen through. I laid there momentarily, trying to decide if I were alive or not. My neck had such a pain in it from the final landing I knew I was indeed alive. This fall didn't deter me from tree climbing as I had a similar experience several years later while I was trying to showoff my tree climbing abilities for a cute neighborhood girl. They were both truly dumb, painful moments, even for a five year old.