Admitting my age

It was my friend's 30th birthday on Sunday. Since we were so close to a lot of good lakes, she decided we should go to the beach before heading home. After an hour we determined there were no public beaches anywhere in all of Spokane area and so headed to a local park. Being that she was trying desperately to avoid thinking about the loss of her youth, my friend decided to start a game of tag on the jungle gym equipment. You had to stay on the play equipment and couldn't touch the ground or you were it. To get from one place to the other, you could only walk on shoes that were sparsely set out between the pieces. If you fell off the shoe, you had to count to 5 before you could move on. It was a ton of fun. A group of about 10 people played and only 3 were under 30.

At one point, NCSteph was "it". I was standing at the bottom of a plastic covered slide and she was at the top. She came sliding down to get me and I had a stroke of brilliance. I decided I would play it like Hilary Swank in "The Next Karate Kid" and jump "tiger style" onto the roof of the slide. Uh huh. First, I am not Hilary Swank. Second, I have no equilibrium. Third, I am a moron. I did land on the top of the slide. However, I immediately fell backwards. I caught the backs of my legs on the edge of the slide and hit the ground. Hard. I landed on my left hip and my forearm. Then my head bounced back and slammed into the ground.

Here's the thing. I didn't want to look foolish in front of all the people present. Nor did I want to admit I was hurt in any way. I immediately jumped up and said "Does this count for my 5 seconds?" It didn't. I was "it". However, I did manage to get out of being it by bleeding profusely on the gravel. My forearm is scraped up pretty bad and I gouged a section out of my palm. I had to stop at Wal-Mart an hour later to buy bandages.

I told my brother about the incident. His response was "Bron, you're THIRTY."