Maybe it Was Karma?

Was having a bit of a ponder about my injured wing.
I think it may have been karma. I dunno, I just have a sneaking suspicion it was.

Not that I'm a bad person or anything, it's just that sometimes I do really dumb things, that inevitably pan out in a far more epically destructive way than initially anticipated. Ain't it always the way?

Perhaps it's all a cyclical, a shit-rolls-along kind of deal. You see, when I was six I broke my friend's arm. I admit it. I did. I broke her arm. I didn't mean to though, honest! I didn't harbour any deep-seated anger or rage in my six-year-old heart towards my friend. At least, I don't remember that being the case anyway. Unless you count the fact that I'm Chilean and she's Argentinian as a reason. Shy of my parents embedding cross-border rivalry in me from birth, I can't see any reason that would be it either. Basically, I'd wager that we can boil it down to my bad decision-making skills, which were obviously well-cultivated even at that early age.

Anyway. It was recess/playlunch/whatever the hell you want to call the break before lunch during school. We were all playing on the monkeybars, swinging around, going upside down, all that jazz. Wholesome kid stuff. Then we started playing this other game, where we'd stand on a chair, then jump towards the monkeybars and catch on, in a spectacular display of primary school acrobatics. Very daring. Especially because the chair was quite a bit higher than the tiny pipsqueak chairs we'd sit at our desks (TINY TINY TOY FURNITURE) on during class. I was playing with my friends, one of whom - and I'm changing her name to protect the innocent here - was called ... Agnes. Let's call her Agnes.

Agnes and I were playing the move-our-chair-back-slightly then jump to the monkey bars game. Ever so slightly, our chairs moved further away from the bars. Then, as she went to speak to someone before her next go, I moved her chair back further. A lot further. I watched as she climbed onto it, oblivious at the gaping chasm between her and the monkeybars (we were six, after all). Then she jumped. Then she landed in a heap on the tan bark.

I don't remember much from those early primary school days. But I do remember that day in the playground. I remember just being kind of curious about what'd happen, whether she'd make it or not. When she didn't, and when she crumpled onto the ground in a heap, my six-year-old mind immediately knew I'd done something Very Very Bad. So I bailed. I probably went to play with someone else, immediately appearing amidst their game. I stayed quiet when she wasn't in class after recess. Man, she was the one that couldn't judge the distance between her chair and the monkeybars, and properly calculate her ability to jump that far! I said nothing.

To this day, I don't think Agnes had any idea that I was the one that caused her to come to school two days later in a cast, and a sling that seemed to take up her entire tiny six year old torso.

I never owed up to it.

Hell, I didn't even tell anyone until a few years ago.

But now the internet knows.

And maybe that's why now I am unable to drive a car or brush my teeth properly.