Miscalculations Were Made

It was November 28th, 2012. We were at my grandparents for thanksgiving dinner. My whole family would be showing up to eat lots of food late into the night. We still had a couple of hours before dinner and so we all decided to play hide and seek in the dark as a way to kill time before dinner. The rules were easy, the people hiding would go find a place to hide in the dark and the seeker goes looking for everyone with a flashlight.

My mom was making us help set up for dinner. We had to set up plates, put down napkins, and lay down silverware. My mom said, “If you guys finish quickly you will have time to play before supper”. So naturally, I sped through everything to go play. Soon we would be well on our way to doing that. I covered the plates my sister covered the silverware, and my brothers and cousin got all the napkins together. Once we finished next to come was the game.

My mom finally declared we did a sufficient enough job that we could go play. As soon as she said we could go I yelled: “hiders it’s time to hide, and seeker it time to count”. Right away I ran upstairs to find a spot to hide. My heart was pounding as I ran up the stairs to find the perfect hiding spot. I was the first upstairs so I had the pick of the litter as to where I wanted to hide. I immediately went to my dad’s only childhood room and hid in between his old bed and the wall. My sister was the seeker so I wasn’t too worried about being found anytime soon so I went closer to the door and stay and listened to what my sister was doing in the hall. Eventually, she made it to the room I was hiding in. When my sister walked in she immediately said “Hello? Is anyone in here?”. I sat very quietly waiting for her to pass. I could hear my heart beating in my chest as I tried to stay as quiet as possible. It wasn’t working she was getting closer by the second. In a desperate attempt to get away before she found me I lunged forward right into the edge of the wooden chest at the foot of the bed. Immediately pain shot through my face, blood was gushing out of my face and I made my way downstairs. I thought I had broken my nose but once my mom noticed she came running over only to notice I had knocked out one of my front teeth out. A miscalculation was made that night.

Photo by McBeth on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND