Proclivities

emmalion:

I still have a scar through my eyebrow where it happened. I was only about six years old at the time, but I still remember exactly how it happened: My eldest sister, Gabrielle, was babysitting my brother and two other sisters during winter break while my parents were Christmas shopping. It must have been early afternoon because we were all still in out pajamas and light was beating into the living room even though the blinds were still shut. Everyone was watching television, save for Gabrielle who shut herself in the upstairs bathroom with the phone to gossip with one of her friends. Likely out of boredom, I began to antagonize my sister Angelica, who is older by three years. After a while of ignoring me, Angelica finally got fed up and gave me a tug on the hair to say, Leave me alone, or I’ll do worse to you than pull your hair. At that age there was entertainment value in getting in fights with my siblings, so of course I kept bothering Angelica. Finally she stood up angrily, which sent me darting through the kitchen and into the dining room thinking I was in for a chase. It wasn’t until after I tripped in the doorway of the kitchen and bashed my head into a dining room chair that I realized Angelica hadn’t even moved from where she stood up and wasn’t going to chase me, afterall. Of course the pain came then, along with a heavy stream of blood. I was too shocked to cry. My brother and sisters stared at me with gaping mouths as I stood up, rapidly covering my shirt and the floor in blood as it dripped from my face. Angelica ran to the foot of the stairs and started shouting for Gabby, but she didn’t hear. Too startled to make out a coherent sentence, I tried to motion for Angelica to run upstairs because Gabby obviously couldn’t hear her from the bathroom but she still stood, looking frightened at the bottom of the stairs, shouting for my sister over and over again. Starting to feel woozy, I stumbled to the stairs, dripping blood all the way up to the bathroom and pushed the door open. Gabrielle hung up the phone and called an ambulance while holding a towel to my head. I must have lost a good amount of blood, because all I remember from that point is sitting at the dining room table while an EMT stood over me, asking me if I knew what year it was or my birthday. The second EMT reached into a plastic bag he was holding and handed me a brown teddy bear that I subsequently threw up all over, granting him the nickname Barf Bear from that moment on. Then my parents rushed in the door from their interrupted shopping trip and took me in the car to Urgent Care (probably so they wouldn’t have to pay for an ambulance ride). The doctor there said that I would need stitched. While we waited for him to prepare, my mom said that she, my dad, and I should all guess how many stitches I would need as a game. My mom went first, guessing ten, but changed her guess when I told her I wanted to guess ten stitches, too. And ten stitches, I got! The thread was bright blue and I didn’t feel a thing. I remember going to my family’s Christmas party a few days later with a big bandaid over my eyebrow. Anyway, I’ve had a scar ever since. It’s funny that I’m just remembering a lot about that time as I write. I don’t know what the point of writing that all out was. It wasn’t planned.