My family and I were spending the day at my grandparents house one brisk summer afternoon, we were trying to have a high quality bonding day. It had been a while since we were all able to get together, so we were all excited to hangout, play games, retell memories and eat delicious food. As always my brother Donavon, who was seven at the time; insisted on playing his favorite game. He played this game every time we went to our grandparents house, it consisted of sticking ordinary toothpicks into the carpet in order to build a sculpture of some sort. Not thinking anything of it, we let him do as he always did; “Hey my bundle of joy”, my mom says to me. “What?” I say in reply as she’s already speaking “Do you wanna go plays some volleyball with your dad and I?”. In my head I was thinking not really, but “sure” already fell off the top of my tongue. As my dad, mom and I were walking outside, I hear “WAIT!!! I WANNA PLAY!” my aunt Danielle screaming from across the echoing house. “WOW! don’t even invite the old folk to come to join? It looks like you guys are afraid of some competition.” my papa implies into the conversation. In reply I scream, “far from it oldy”. He quickly jumps up to come outside with us. No more than 45 minutes later, we decided to take a water break;  as we entered the house Donavon made little progress on his sculpture and was told to pick up the toothpicks so we could all sit down.

As my papa and I were gently tumbling around on the freshly vacuumed carpet, using his elderly strength to his advantage which stunned my reaction, allowing his wrinkly feet to quickly grasp around my fragile waist and before I knew it my body was slammed to the ground. Not thinking anything of it, I went to get up as if nothing was wrong, until a sinsacion of pain overwhelmed my body. My initial reaction was to find the source of pain, I glanced down and saw a toothpick through my hand. Immediately after I expectedly screamed in fear, as adrenalin rapidly rushed through my body. While I was in search of my mother, with hope she would know the right course of treatment. I could feel the tears begin to perfuse my eyes. What’s going to happen to me? Am I going to need surgery? I couldn’t stop the countless emotions from bombarding my mind.  All I saw was blood pouring out of my hand, I faintly remember being carried to the kitchen counter by my papa. I saw my family members begin to slowly surround me, in confusion as to what was going on. My papa attempted to gracefully get the toothpick out with tweezers, however the pain was too much to bear. I sobbed to my mom to take me to the doctors instead, she listened to my plea and took me to the emergency room. I was too horrified from the reality of a small wooden stick being sliced through my petite hand to even slightly glance at it throughout the car ride. As I arrived to the Emergency Room for the first time, instead of feeling a sensation of relief like I heard you’re supposed to feel, I instead felt an unexpected rush of anxiety from the frantic chaos that now surrounded me. As I laid on my scrawny bed, I was able to glance through the open curtain and observe the other injured patients, realizing a small wound in my hand was nothing compared to some of their vigorous injuries. When my doctor calmly entered the room to examine me,  my nerves began to settle. However, that changed when she informed me, “ The toothpick seemed to break off fragments into your hand and in order to get all of the pieces we must cut open your hand and then scrape them all, once we are able to do that we can stitch you back up and you will be able to leave”. I knew there was no point in fighting with what had to be done, so instead of arguing I allowed her to do the procedure despite my emotions. 

Although the procedure was completed, I was still feeling upset from all the events that occurred in the previous three hours. My parents thought it would improve my mood if they took me to walmart, to pick out a barbie of my choice. I optimistically accepted this offer and decided to pick out the most recent barbie. As they thought it would, the new barbie was able to take my mind off of the throbbing stitched up hand. Over the next few days my hand began to heal and I was back to being able to use it without pain within a week. Ever since this incident I get a flashback to this time when I have to see or use a toothpick. As expected the game Donavon once loved so much was imminently thrown into the garbage, and the story lives on as a memory we tell when we have our family bonding days.