Narrative Essay

(This is a true story that happened when I was about 6 or 7 years old.)


Frozen with fear, I laid motionless and unable to breath. It felt as though the breath was being choked out of me. My eyes were fixed on the ceiling as I desperately gasped for air. It had happened so suddenly that I wasn't sure how seriously I was hurt. All I could focus on was catching my breath, and the pain shooting through my entire body.
The day had been great up until the accident. We had spent all morning playing in the yard under the warm sun, and all afternoon watching movies on the couch. My best friend and I were very energetic that night as we brushed our teeth and prepared for our sleepover. My mom had laid out a mattress on the floor next to my bed for my friend to sleep on, but her and I were far from ready for bed.
Laughing and yelling we began to jump on the bed. We jumped from my bed, to the mattress on the floor and back. We were having a blast!
"Watch how high I can jump!" I yelled, springing off the mattress.
"I bet I can jump higher!" my friend replied, leaping from the bed to the mattress. We both climbed onto the bed and continued to bounce.
"I bet I could do a flip," she said. With a hard strong thrust upwards, she flipped her body forward and landed on her back. Laughing loudly, she stood back up.
"That was so awesome!" I yelled in excitement, "Let me try!" I did the same and landed on my back on the bed with a thump! I stood up and chuckled. We continued to take turns flipping. It was so much fun, until I made a huge mistake.
I sprung high into the air and began to flip forward, but when I got halfway and was completely upside down I looked down and did not see the bed, but the hard wood floor. In a panic I attempted to abort my flip, but it was too late. With a loud crash I hit the ground, landing directly on my head and snapping my neck forward into a terribly painful position. I could not move. I could not breathe. I looked up and saw my friend leaning over me.
"Get my mo-" I croaked, unable to speak a completely sentence. I was trying to tell her to run and tell my mom what had happened. I laid there for what felt like forever, choking with no air in my lungs. My mom bursted into the room:
"What was that crash? What happened?" she exclaimed. She ran over and inspected me to see if I was seriously hurt, then grabbed the phone to call an ambulance.
I finally caught my breath, but I was afraid to move, I might have broken my neck. The ambulance arrived and took me out of the house on a stretcher. At the hospital I had x-rays done on my neck and back. Thankfully, nothing was broken. I was okay.
Relieved, we left the hospital. I will never forget that day, and neither will my friend. And one thing's for sure, I will never jump on a bed again.