Hey, It Happens

Growing up, kids make many mistakes that ultimately, they don’t realize that’ll affect their current or future lives. I currently and always will have to live with the mistake I made as a child.

Having two siblings, one older, one younger. Of course, growing up with them, we’d encourage each other to do dumb things that wouldn’t always turn out great. We’d get each other in trouble all the time, and we’d blame each other for things the other didn’t do. We’d tell one to do something for entertainment, and so on. When one of us proposed an idea that wouldn’t have good end results, we still encouraged each other to do it. Looking back at it, more than half of the activities we’d do were not smart. Even though we had fun in the moment, I wouldn’t want to do them now. I wish I hadn’t been involved in some of those activities. Since I did involve myself in those things, I set myself up into thinking, “this will be fun,” rather than looking at what could happen. The mistake I made was something they would’ve encouraged me to do.

No one told me to do this, I decided it on my own, don’t ask why I just wanted to have some fun, which it didn’t end well. One night, I decided it would be fun to blindfold myself and walk around the house and see how efficiently I could walk around while not seeing. I had lived there all my life at that point, and not much had changed either. I walked around my house multiple times a day without running into anything, I decided to try it without looking, why couldn’t I do it as well as just closing my eyes? To my knowledge, I could do well since I did it every day. I was walking confidently thinking I knew where I was going. I decided to put my hands to my side because I wasn’t nervous to run into anything since I knew exactly where I was. Again, I was wrong. I walked right into the corner of the fridge and when I took my blindfold off, I looked down because something had fell on my sweatshirt. When I examined it, I realized that I had chipped my front tooth. My parents were very upset that I had done this, “why would you blindfold yourself anyways?” they asked. “I was bored and I just wanted to do something fun,” I’d explain back. I guess they didn’t understand my fourth grade thoughts and I didn’t understand their knowledge either. Of course, I didn’t mean to run into the fridge and break it. My fourth grade self just wanted to have some fun, and of course, this was entertaining to both of my siblings since it was not them in my position.

Now, one third of my tooth is fake because of this mistake. Luckily, the next day I already had a scheduled dentist appointment so I didn’t have to wait a while for my tooth to get fixed. I can tell you right now though, that walking into the dentist’s office the next morning was very, and I mean very embarrassing. Still on my fridge, there is a mark from where I hit my tooth, and I’m able to use that as a reference of how much I’ve grown since I’ve made this mistake. It also symbolizes the growth of my knowledge and what I’ve learned from the incident. What I learned from this trial and error is that not everything that seems fun has a realistic outcome. Meaning, if someone pushes you to do something because it seems fun or exciting in the moment, it may have a negative outcome and might not be so fun and exciting after the action is done. In all seriousness, not everyone thinks of the outcome before they partake in an activity or action. They go directly into the activity without thinking over the outcomes, myself included. Of course, everyone is human so everyone makes mistakes, but if you can avoid those mistakes it’s probably for the best. Don’t need to stress about it because hey, it happens.

Photo by jon_gilbert on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA