Then the realization hit me. I had no idea where I was, or what I was doing there. I had no recollection of the past day, and I only started to remember it about a week later. Apparently my brother found me lying on the ground under the jungle gym and after a couple minutes of not moving, I began to cry. At that moment my family rushed to the car to go to the hospital. They took me to the emergency room, where I woke up about twenty minutes later. To this day, I can not confirm that because I had had short-term memory loss.

It was December 24, 2007. I was just four days short of seven years old, long before the days of waking up late in the afternoon, and almost everyone was in a festive mood because of the holidays. I was visiting my grandparents in Florida for my first-grade winter break, and despite being at the end of December, the sun was bright and the weather was warm. The idea of spending time outside came up at one point during the morning, and with a unanimous agreement, my mother, father, brother and I climbed into my grandfather’s car and set off in the direction of a nearby playground. However, we decided not to go to the usual playground, and instead we ventured upon one we had not visited in years before — or that year for that matter. Of course I had pointed it out, because I was six years old and attracted to any place other than the immediate destination. There were no other people there, but that wasn’t a problem. I was at an age where playing with my family was preferable to playing with my friends, something that is in complete contrast now. We must have spent at least an hour just playing tag and hide-and-go-seek on the relatively new, primarily wooden structures inside the playground. I remember finding the strangest and smallest spots to crawl into to hide — a useful ability in a foreign territory. I would wait about five minutes in that spot without making a sound, a difficult task when the floor was covered with noisy wooden chips, but before long I grew bored and decided to run out and find a new spot. I was confident in my ability to outrun everyone else, not knowing that my brother, four years my senior, was going easy on me.

Very soon, it seemed, it was time to leave. I heard my father call out my and my brother’s name. Thinking it was a ploy to get us out of our hiding spots, I did not move a muscle from my hiding spot under a wooden fort. Eventually, I realized it wasn’t a trick when both of my parents called out our names, so, after waiting for my brother to come out first as to not reveal the spot, I crawled out.

    Do you know that feeling when everything is going perfect and you decide to do one thing that messes everything up? It could be anything, from a quick change on a multiple choice question to adding the final ingredient to a dessert. For me, it was an action. See, in this playground, there was a jungle gym. It was the color of an oak tree, with a faded-metal kind of look for the bars. I loved jungle gyms, and climbing things in general. I used to climb up the walls of the hallway in my apartment by propping myself up with my legs and crawling up. So when this jungle gym came into my field of view, it wasn’t an option to just not go to it. It taunted me, forced me to swing. I heard my mother call out to me again that we were leaving, but it barely registered. This was how I proved myself to be cooler and older than six, this was how I would leave with a bang. Again, I heard the call of my name, but I still stepped up to the stone platform of the jungle gym, which was elevated about one foot off of the ground. I stared at the bars for about three seconds. Then I jumped. Thirty minutes later, I woke up in the emergency room.

    Despite losing about half an hour of my memory after my concussion, my memory before is crystal clear. I even remember my thought process right before I was about to jump. I guess traumatic experiences can do that to you. At Bank Street, the school I attended at the time, there was a jungle gym somewhat similar to the one this playground housed. I was able to jump to the third “bar” (fourth if I had a running start) without trouble. Even if I didn’t make the jump, there was a soft padding under it that cushioned the fall and was fairly close to the jungle gym. However, the ground under the jungle gym at the playground in Florida was covered in wooden shavings and hard concrete, about three feet above the height where my feet hung. While I’m not sure whether I hit the ground or the stone platform I had jumped off of, it definitely wasn’t a soft fall. I had assumed that, if I could make the third bar at Bank Street, I could definitely make it here.

    So, why didn’t I make the jump? I believe it is for two reasons, though it could really be anything. For one, I was not in the Bank Street playground, jumping onto the Bank Street jungle gym. I was in Florida, 1045 miles away, in a playground that I had never been in before, and a jungle gym I had never seen before. How would I know if the bars were the same length apart, or the same height from the initial jump, or as easy to grab? I wouldn’t, but I also wouldn’t think about that — I was only six. The other reason was that I was acting irrationally. I had already run around for over an hour, and it was adrenaline that was pushing me, not logic. Had I spent more time observing the jungle gym, I may have made the jump -- or not taken it at all.

    I was in a stretcher-bed combination when I woke up, the “doctor’s office” smell of cleanliness, medicine, and hand sanitiser wafting through my nose. I had a sharp pain somewhere in my body but I couldn’t tell where. My vision was blurry and I couldn’t move my head. My parents and brother were both there, eyes wide and legs fidgeting, looking worried. I probably made some sort of moaning sound, which triggered them to come over to where I was. They were talking, but I couldn’t really understand the words, so I looked around the room I was in. It was mostly white with blue curtains near the entrance, and the rest I can’t recall. I fell back asleep and woke up being rolled out of the room, and into a CAT scan. I vaguely heard a doctor telling me to close my eyes once I got inside the CAT scan, but that wasn’t a problem. My main issue was opening my eyes — when I tried I got an intense jolt, where I can only pinpoint to be behind my eye sockets. The pain was similar to migraines I experience today, with a splitting pain near the back half of my head. It seemed much worse however, because I was once again, only six years old.

    After the CAT scan, I was pushed back to the room, dazed and confused. A doctor came into the room, saying something about a concussion and possible convulsions. Directly after, I very vaguely recall leaving the hospital and going back to my grandparents’ house, but the thing I do remember was crawling into bed, head splitting, hoping I would wake up the next morning.

    Now that I think of it, it is not uncommon for people to get injured on holidays or birthdays. You generally sleep less and consume more sugar or alcohol, thus making you more prone to accidents and injuries. On top of that, you are more excited than you are normally, which could lead you into making rash decisions. Still, the fact that one two-second decision can ruin an entire vacation isn’t something you want to solely blame on holiday “joy.” Would I try the jump again if I somehow went back to that moment? Not a chance. Do I regret it, though? Not at all. Despite the intense pain and inability to do any major physical activity for three months, the event of my concussion created a new layer of trust in my family. Initially, when I was lying on the ground unmoving with my eyes closed, my brother said he thought it was just a practical joke. (To be fair, I did pull a lot of those). But after my concussion, any doubt of validity in similar situations was eliminated because we trusted each other whether we were injured or not — we wouldn’t joke about that anymore. It was unspoken, but none of us wanted to be a “boy that cried wolf” after that; none of us wanted to be the person that faked getting hurt so much so that when they actually got hurt, nobody would believe them. In a way, my concussion acted as a kind of “phoenix,” a mythical creature that, once it dies, it becomes reborn out of its ashes, but stronger.