The screeching of tires reached my ears and the flood of lights reached my eyes as I realized that a car was coming my way. The impact was hard and sent me flying. The next thing I knew, I was sitting at the curb, punching the grass with my left fist.
The impact didn’t hurt, or at least not yet, but I was just so angry. I still wasn’t even sure this really happened and I wished it hadn’t. But in reality, I knew it had. My eyes said so, my ears said so, my fist said so, everything did. It was just so obvious and I couldn’t escape the truth.
And how had this all happened? Why was I now sitting on the curb, my fist punching the grass beside me? What had happened to lead to this moment? The fact is, all of this happened from me executing a simple task. And what task was that? I was giving a basketball to my friend. How hard could that have been and how could it lead me getting hit by a car?
Where did my shoe go? I was so confused and frustrated I hadn’t noticed it gone. I have my right one, but where did my left one go?
I saw the purple bike. (Yes, I’ve got a purple bike. So what? If it were my choice, it wouldn’t be purple. It was just the only bike my size at the garage sale and I needed a bike.)
Anyways, I saw the purple bike and I saw that it was officially permanently dead. It wasn’t unconscious, it wasn’t sleeping, it wasn’t moping about its unfortunate unlucky self, trying to get happy again, nor was it just sitting there, waiting for someone to pick it up and ride it again. No. It died.
*A moment of silence for the purple bike.*
At least it wasn’t me in that coffin. Hah! Stupid bike.
“Do you have a phone?” my brother asked.
My first thought was, “Even if I did have a phone, it would be dead right now, just like that bike over there.”
But I soon realized he was no talking to me, but was instead talking to the two guys who hit me. So one of them brought out his phone and called the police.
While one of them was calling the police, the other guy told me not stand up. But what I decided was that I would stand up, go to the mosque, then back home. And besides, that’s part of the reason why I came out at 10:15 in the night. The other reason was to deliver a basketball, which I did, so now I just gotta go to the mosque and back home.
So I stood up but my right leg shifted to the side very much unlike it was supposed to and I fell right back down onto the curb. And that’s when I realized the weird sensation in my leg.
No more than some time later, the fire truck came. But why was it here? I didn’t see a fire anywhere.
Then no less than a long time later, the police came and started questioning me. They were asking me some questions but I was still too shocked to answer much of them. But I do remember saying that this was all my fault, saying how much of an idiot I was.
See, the way it happened, me and my brother were riding our bikes on the sidewalk, me ahead of him, when we came to the highway ramp. I saw a car use the turn signal so I waited for him to go onto the highway ramp. When he passed, I waited to see if another car would go.
I saw another car, but it wasn’t using its turn signal. Therefore I assumed that he would not go onto the ramp and would therefore go forward, thus giving me a passage through the ramp.
So I went forward, thinking this. That was when I got hit.
“What’s your phone number?” the police man asked me.
I answered.
He called my home but hung up, saying the phone was not answered.
So I gave him my mom’s cell phone number and he called.
Uqbah’s dad’s car parked nearby and he came out. Where was Uqbah though?
So Uqbah’s dad came closer when a police officer stopped him, asking him if he was related to us. He said he wasn’t but also said that he was a friend. That was good enough for the police officer, for he let him come to me and my brother.
He talked to us and later, the ambulance finally came. The ambulance people came out and needed my right shoe to come off. Instead of just simply just untying it, they cut the shoe laces and carried me onto a bed with wheels and onto the ambulance.
“Thinking negatively about all of the bad things will just make things seem harder and more frustrating” The words my brother says to me over and over again replayed in my mind. He would say this all of the times because I am a very pessimistic person. Now, I was just hit by a car, and I learned from experience that what my brother says is true and I didn’t want to make this any harder or more frustrating than it really was, so I started to laugh. It worked, too.
And at least we weren’t going to Dallas.
They closed the ambulance doors and my family followed the ambulance to the hospital. When we arrived, they took me out of the ambulance and into a room in the hospital. As soon as they took me into that room, they took me out and into another room to x-ray my leg.
After they x-rayed my leg, they brought me back into the previous room. A nurse came in and injected some pain medicine into me skin by sticking a needle into my arm and feeding the medicine into it with a tube-thingy. She left and after a while, it hurt again. I couldn’t even shift my leg without it hurting severely and I had to move my leg because I am very claustrophobic and by not moving it gives me an uncomfortable feeling. I needed some more of that pain medicine. I pressed a weird-looking button and the nurse came! Then I got more pain medicine.
But at 12:00, they take me to the children’s hospital because if they work on my leg at the other hospital, I may limp for the rest of my life.
So I slept there for about two or three days. I slept on a hospital bed (of course) and they had to put blankets under my leg to keep it elevated. One night during those two or three days, the needle that they use to put pain medicine into my arm fell off. I tried sticking it back in, but not only was that a problem. I had to use the bathroom.
“What’s the big deal?” you may say. “You get out of bed, walk to the bathroom, and do what you gotta do.”
Well it wasn’t that easy in my case. First of all, I couldn’t move my leg around much yet, it was hard getting out of bed, and I didn’t have crutches yet, let alone know how to use them. So that was a big problem for me. But at least they made it a bit easier for me. Instead of me having to go all of the way to the bathroom, they had a portable toilet right beside my bed. So I crawled out of bed, trying to keep my leg still so nothing stupid happens.
But, yet again, how did I come to this point? Why am I here, having trouble sitting on a toilet and having to lay down all of the time with my leg completely still? I already told you it was because I was delivering a basketball, but there’s more detail to that part of the story.
School ended and I was leaving to Dallas the next day, June 17, 2006. But I hadn’t packed yet. After I tossed a few clothes into my suitcase, I went and played basketball with my friend Uqbah. When I went back home at around 8:00, Uqbah tossed his basketball into my backyard asking if I could give it back to him at his house later that night around 10:00 and he wanted me to get it to him that night because I was leaving to Dallas the next day. I saw no reason why I shouldn’t so I agreed.
But at 10:00, my mom didn’t want me to go out. But I finally got her to let me go as long as my older brother came with me. So we left and went to Uqbah’s house, giving him the basketball.
When we left his house to go to the mosque, I thought we should cross the street to the sidewalk across the street. But my brother continued forward on the sidewalk we were currently on, so I went ahead of him. And I got hit.
But then when I thought about it at the hospital, I realized something that just made me laugh, both because it was so obvious when I had not seen it and because not doing so just cost my life. When my family would go to Dallas, my older brother would stay behind because he had to go to work. So it could’ve really gone like this: When I go to Dallas, Uqbah could just come to my house and get his basketball from the backyard.
So on the second day at the hospital, they knocked me out. And when I woke up, I had a cast on my leg. I also threw up when I woke up. But on the third day, I learned how to use crutches and I went home in a wheelchair.
At home, I had to drink some sort of pain medicine every time my leg hurts. It tasted nasty but I got used to it.
But also at home, my leg wasn’t the only problem, though it was the biggest. One other problem was my right shoulder. When I was hit, I got a nasty big cut there and I could barely move my left arm by itself. But all of that was taken care of. So, yeah, no problem.
One or two weeks later, I had to go back so they could put a titanium rod into my leg. When I woke up, I was a little dazed and I threw up. My leg was sore. It felt swollen and it hurt badly. It felt like your leg would feel perhaps if it were hit all over with a hammer.
After that, I slept at the hospital for one more night and I went back home.
Several weeks later, I went back and they took the cast off. They used some sort of razor thing to do it. At first I wouldn’t let them because what if they accidentally cut my leg? Now that would just be stupid. But to prove me wrong, the nurse ran the razor blade thing on her finger. It did no damage but that didn’t convince me. Maybe she was just an evil demon named Saint Dane traveling through space and time to destroy people’s civilizations. But she cut the cast off anyways. Then she put a boot with some straps on that leg. At least now I can take the boot off whenever my leg itches. Those itches have been haunting me ever since I got hit.
Several days later, I went back and I could walk! But three weeks later, I went back to school.
As school went by, I went to the hospital every so often for x-rays. Then, when the year was almost over, I was told I would have the choice to get the titanium rod taken out. Heck yes! It was coming out. Never mind, it wasn’t. My mom didn’t want it to because she said I was allergic to the stuff they used to knock me out. I wanted it out, though, because the doctor said that if I kept it in, my bone would grow around it as I grew and if I ended up breaking that leg again, it’d be hard to fix.
So I still have the titanium rod in my right leg even now. And it may be there forever and come with me to my grave, unless something stupid happens again and that leg breaks. If that does happen and they take the rod out, I wonder if they’ll let me keep it to use as a self-defense weapon to those who mean to cause harm. I heard titanium is really strong.
(If I had a really good memory, this personal narrative would have much more detail and would therefore be much longer):(
(But you probably don’t want to read some boring story full with detail about how a kid who gets his leg broken and gets it repaired. I know I wouldn’t. I would rather just read some Lord of the Rings if I wanted to read something with people dying or getting rammed with trolls or getting severely hurt and being fixed up)

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