All for Grapes
Impulsive, crazy, and a little bit lazy – these are the words I would use to describe a young me. Falling off the stairs and landing accidental backflips, nearly getting run over by cars, and procrastinating homework, my childhood had no shortage of dramatic experiences. But who doesn’t do that these days? Especially the procrastinating. These experiences, including those near death, would eventually become tales I would tell to my friends and family in the future, if I survived that long. But my life wasn’t entirely made up of demented decisions. I still went to school and played sports like any other regular kid.
I had been that regular kid for quite some time now. Nothing harrowing had happened for ages, and, I thought, nothing exciting would happen in the near future. I was just walking down the street with my friends after being let out from class on a typical late-summer day. The burning sun beat down on the pavement mercilessly. If I was to put my hand on the ground, it would come away red, and I would have felt as if I had just touched a pan on a stove.
I lifted my head, swinging it from side to side, eyes scanning the sky for any hint of a cloud that might provide some shade. As I turned a corner, my eyes shifted left, and caught on the sight of…grapes. Grapes hanging from a tree just behind a pointed fence. The diamond-shaped head on top of each fence pole reminded me of spear tips used in the stone age, mis-shapen but still pointy. They project a loud “no trespassing” signal to outsiders. How there were grapes just hanging there, waiting to be picked, I didn’t know. All I knew was that I wanted one. That might be stealing, another more reasonable part of me argued. Some crazy adult brandishing a rusty rake might come out from the building behind the tree with the grapes, running towards me, screaming insults. Then again, I saw no one near me but my friends, all chattering together like a flock of noisy seagulls. Everyone else was hiding indoors, trying to stay away from the heat.
I stopped in front of the fence keeping me from the grapes. It was tall, made out of iron, and dark green. My friends paused too, glancing at me.
“Why did you stop?” one inquired. I didn’t answer, focusing on the grapes.
I imagined the dangling fruit was a basketball, letting myself leap up as I had done so many times before. My fingers closed around the grapes, I felt the warmth of their peel on my skin and… splat. I had the grapes in my hand and held them up triumphantly - or at least, I tried to. The grapes slipped from my hand as if blown away by a phantom breeze, falling to the ground and flattening against the hot pavement.
I looked down, as did my friends. My hand, the one that had grabbed the grapes, was red. Crimson red. The color of blood. It flowed from a gash on the side of my hand near my pinky, slowly gushing more and more until my entire arm was colored red, like an artist had dumped a bucket of paint on a blank canvas. Strangely enough, there was no pain. Only the cut, the blood, and the grapes on the ground. Part of my palm was penetrated by the fence head when I was falling. I didn’t notice at the moment as my eyes were all focused on fetching the grapes, forgetting that on the way down there were those “no-trespassing” fence tips to avoid.
“Oh my god!” one of my friends yelled. “We need to get you to the E.R!”
“Dude!” another one shouted, pushing my back, trying to get me to move.
I moved slowly, like some sort of drowsiness had taken over. The world blurred together, coming in and out of focus like a camera lens. Sights and sounds became one until it all suddenly cleared, and I was sitting in a room with a person dressed in a white coat, examining my hand.
The blood on my arm was gone, hastily wiped away, leaving smears of crimson up and down my forearm like brushstrokes. The doctor straightened and looked me straight in the eye.
“You’re going to need stitches.”
Stitches!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I had broken rules and looked death straight in the eye, and yet, this was what terrified me. A thread piercing two sides of my skin and weaving it together, sealing a wound shut. I would have to live with that thread, and feel a tight, writhing sensation in my stomach every time I took a glance at it. Live with that revolting image seared to the back of my eyelids. Live with stitches.
“It’s not going to be there forever,” a voice in the room pointed out. “Only, like, a few weeks.”
“Nope,” I told the doctor, “out of the question. I refuse.”
The doctor shrugged, looking like he’d rather not try to convince a random kid to get stitches and start a petty argument.
“Suit yourself. But I still need to do some work on it.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as the doctor wrapped up my cut and told me I could go. As each day passed, I stared at that bandage, marveling that it wasn’t a thread in my skin. Life was great. All was well. Until my cut healed.
By not getting stitches, I’d somehow messed up the way my hand regrew, and now my pinky existed, half bent over my palm. It hovered like an unfinished arch every time I tried to write, getting in the way of my pencil. My pinky was bothersome.
I was trying to do my homework a few days later. I hadn’t told my parents what happened, and they hadn’t bothered to ask why there was a bandage covering part of my right hand. As far as they were concerned, I was fine. This wasn’t the first stupid thing I’d done before.
My hand moved awkwardly across the page and my pencil shifted to the left too far and dragged a line through my equation. That was it. The pinky had to go. So I did something stupid, as I always did when things weren’t going well, and slammed my hand on the table. The pinky snapped back into a straight line, but my hand throbbed. I’d injured myself again.
Looking down, I watched as a small dot of red blossomed from behind my skin and grew, like someone had squeezed a single drop of red dye drip into a bowl of water. I shrugged, and went back to my homework. After all, the pinky deserved it.
Today, there is still a scar on my hand from those grapes. My pinky can’t bend very far back, but I don’t regret my decisions much. Next time I see a grape hanging like that, I’d still jump, but would remind myself to take a detour on the way down.
Impulsive, crazy, and a little bit lazy – these are the words I would use to describe a young me. Falling off the stairs and landing accidental backflips, nearly getting run over by cars, and procrastinating homework, my childhood had no shortage of dramatic experiences. But who doesn’t do that these days? Especially the procrastinating. These experiences, including those near death, would eventually become tales I would tell to my friends and family in the future, if I survived that long. But my life wasn’t entirely made up of demented decisions. I still went to school and played sports like any other regular kid.
I had been that regular kid for quite some time now. Nothing harrowing had happened for ages, and, I thought, nothing exciting would happen in the near future. I was just walking down the street with my friends after being let out from class on a typical late-summer day. The burning sun beat down on the pavement mercilessly. If I was to put my hand on the ground, it would come away red, and I would have felt as if I had just touched a pan on a stove.
I lifted my head, swinging it from side to side, eyes scanning the sky for any hint of a cloud that might provide some shade. As I turned a corner, my eyes shifted left, and caught on the sight of…grapes. Grapes hanging from a tree just behind a pointed fence. The diamond-shaped head on top of each fence pole reminded me of spear tips used in the stone age, mis-shapen but still pointy. They project a loud “no trespassing” signal to outsiders. How there were grapes just hanging there, waiting to be picked, I didn’t know. All I knew was that I wanted one. That might be stealing, another more reasonable part of me argued. Some crazy adult brandishing a rusty rake might come out from the building behind the tree with the grapes, running towards me, screaming insults. Then again, I saw no one near me but my friends, all chattering together like a flock of noisy seagulls. Everyone else was hiding indoors, trying to stay away from the heat.
I stopped in front of the fence keeping me from the grapes. It was tall, made out of iron, and dark green. My friends paused too, glancing at me.
“Why did you stop?” one inquired. I didn’t answer, focusing on the grapes.
I imagined the dangling fruit was a basketball, letting myself leap up as I had done so many times before. My fingers closed around the grapes, I felt the warmth of their peel on my skin and… splat. I had the grapes in my hand and held them up triumphantly - or at least, I tried to. The grapes slipped from my hand as if blown away by a phantom breeze, falling to the ground and flattening against the hot pavement.
I looked down, as did my friends. My hand, the one that had grabbed the grapes, was red. Crimson red. The color of blood. It flowed from a gash on the side of my hand near my pinky, slowly gushing more and more until my entire arm was colored red, like an artist had dumped a bucket of paint on a blank canvas. Strangely enough, there was no pain. Only the cut, the blood, and the grapes on the ground. Part of my palm was penetrated by the fence head when I was falling. I didn’t notice at the moment as my eyes were all focused on fetching the grapes, forgetting that on the way down there were those “no-trespassing” fence tips to avoid.
“Oh my god!” one of my friends yelled. “We need to get you to the E.R!”
“Dude!” another one shouted, pushing my back, trying to get me to move.
I moved slowly, like some sort of drowsiness had taken over. The world blurred together, coming in and out of focus like a camera lens. Sights and sounds became one until it all suddenly cleared, and I was sitting in a room with a person dressed in a white coat, examining my hand.
The blood on my arm was gone, hastily wiped away, leaving smears of crimson up and down my forearm like brushstrokes. The doctor straightened and looked me straight in the eye.
“You’re going to need stitches.”
Stitches!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I had broken rules and looked death straight in the eye, and yet, this was what terrified me. A thread piercing two sides of my skin and weaving it together, sealing a wound shut. I would have to live with that thread, and feel a tight, writhing sensation in my stomach every time I took a glance at it. Live with that revolting image seared to the back of my eyelids. Live with stitches.
“It’s not going to be there forever,” a voice in the room pointed out. “Only, like, a few weeks.”
“Nope,” I told the doctor, “out of the question. I refuse.”
The doctor shrugged, looking like he’d rather not try to convince a random kid to get stitches and start a petty argument.
“Suit yourself. But I still need to do some work on it.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as the doctor wrapped up my cut and told me I could go. As each day passed, I stared at that bandage, marveling that it wasn’t a thread in my skin. Life was great. All was well. Until my cut healed.
By not getting stitches, I’d somehow messed up the way my hand regrew, and now my pinky existed, half bent over my palm. It hovered like an unfinished arch every time I tried to write, getting in the way of my pencil. My pinky was bothersome.
I was trying to do my homework a few days later. I hadn’t told my parents what happened, and they hadn’t bothered to ask why there was a bandage covering part of my right hand. As far as they were concerned, I was fine. This wasn’t the first stupid thing I’d done before.
My hand moved awkwardly across the page and my pencil shifted to the left too far and dragged a line through my equation. That was it. The pinky had to go. So I did something stupid, as I always did when things weren’t going well, and slammed my hand on the table. The pinky snapped back into a straight line, but my hand throbbed. I’d injured myself again.
Looking down, I watched as a small dot of red blossomed from behind my skin and grew, like someone had squeezed a single drop of red dye drip into a bowl of water. I shrugged, and went back to my homework. After all, the pinky deserved it.
Today, there is still a scar on my hand from those grapes. My pinky can’t bend very far back, but I don’t regret my decisions much. Next time I see a grape hanging like that, I’d still jump, but would remind myself to take a detour on the way down.
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