Have you ever been in an embarrassing and scary situation? Embarrassing cause its... well embarrassing and scary because you don’t see a way out? Well these situations seem to happen to me quite often. I don’t really know why either...
Anyway about 2 years ago my family was visiting relatives in Sisters, Oregon. If you've ever been there then you know that there's nothing once you get outside the city limits. Its like you're in the middle of nowhere. After a week of fun and visiting we left for home. For some reason we made a stop at this motel headquarters place thing and while my parents went in the rest of us decided to hit the little playground.
We had the whole place to ourselves. Not a single person in sight. Dating back to my youth, I have always liked slides. True story. Never met a slide I didn’t like. Well this playground had a little enclosed slide. Nothing to get excited about really. I went down a couple of times, just for kicks and decided it wasn’t worth it. A little while later my youngest sister, Katherine, 5 at the time, challenged me to a sliding competition. Not one to turn down a challenge I accepted her game of slide. Big mistake!!!
If you're youngest (and smallest) sibling EVER challenges you to something find a way to "try" then politely decline.
I politely let her go first and she started things off with a bang! She doubled up over her legs and went down the slide backwards! I was impressed. As the oldest brother I take pride in the feats that my siblings can pull off. After she had gone down I gave her the proper amount of applause and prepared for my attempt. I was just contemplating what I should do when Katherine turned to me and said "Ha! You cant do that!” Challenging me in fun is one thing. Taunting and daring is another, even if you are family. I turned to her and said "oh yeah? Watch this!" Looking back I see that I should've put aside my competitive juices and declared her the winner, like something out of "Little House on the Prairie".
Anyway I got up there, sat, turned around, doubled up over my legs, and launched myself. It was a good run, till I got to the point where the slide curves at the bottom. I came to a sudden and complete stop. Not good. There I was facing backward, hands reaching toward my feet, stuck in a little kids slide. After a few seconds, in which my siblings expected me to come hurtling out of the slide, I made my mayday call, "hey guys! I’m stuck!” There was a shocked silence. Then pandemonium broke out. People began to laugh, ask me how I was stuck, try to get me out... complete chaos. One brother tried pulling me out the bottom, but that didn’t work cause every time he pulled I could feel each disk in my spine stretch to the point of severe pain. My other brother tried to reach down the slide to pull me back up, but envisioning him falling in and killing me (or worse, crippling me) I screamed at him to keep himself at least 5 feet away from the slide.
After those failed rescue attempts I did what every kid in a precarious situation does. I yelled for my mom. Screamed is more like it. Usually a mothers voice has a soothing effect on the victim in question. Not this time. As she came walking over (yes, walking) I could hear her laughing hysterically. That really didn’t have a "calming" effect on me. There I am stuck in a slide, panicking about how their going to get me out, and my own mother is laughing at the whole thing! And I have to say that I was in a lot of pain. My body was not made to be in that position for that amount of time.
Once my mom came over she called for my dad. He couldn’t think of anything either. I was starting to get desperate. Thank the Lord I didn’t have to go to the bathroom! We would have been in BIG trouble. So finally (I really don’t know how) they were able to pull me out the bottom without causing damage to my back. Once I was out I just lay on the ground, stretching out my back, breathing in the fresh air, and just being thankful for freedom. After a few seconds I became aware of laughing. Like a lot of laughing. You know how I said we were the only ones there? Well as soon as I got stuck people began to pop up out of nowhere. Seriously. There must have been at least 10 other people besides my family. They all came over thinking it was some little kid stuck in the slide, and when they saw me pop out they busted up. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so embarrassed. It was quite humbling. So after I had recovered we got back in the can and drove happily into the sunset.
Oh, and in the van, Katherine was like "see, I told you you couldn’t do it!"
She was the undisputed champ.
