To listen or not to listen?  Sometimes listening is the key. But other times it isn’t; it depends on the situation.  Usually people make the right choice, but sometimes people don’t, and when you don’t make the right choice you have consequences for your actions.  Well, this is an account of when I  didn’t make the right choice……

It started out on an ordinary, tedious summer.  My mother and I were walking home from the library on a serene, cloudless afternoon.  I was peacefully riding my scooter. On the way home from the library there is this prodigious hill. I mean, this hill is very much humongous. As I was looking down at this humongous hill, a thought just popped into my head: I should ride my scooter down this humongous hill. Now,  if I had second guessed myself, I would most likely have not made the ludicrous decision to ride my scooter down this prodigious hill. Like a complete and total maniac, I would also most likely not be in this situation if I had listened to my mother at all when she suggested several times I should not ride my scooter down the hill because it would most likely have a negative consequence. But like most times,  I do not listen to my mother, so I didn’t second guess myself that this was most likely not going to have a negative consequence. So I did what I thought was going to be enjoyable, what I thought was going to be delightful and entertaining, and what was not probably going to have a negative consequence. Little did I know it was none of those.

So I stood at the top of the prodigious hill.  I gripped the handlebars, put my left leg forward and pushed; it did not take very long for gravity to do its job. Before I knew it I was going way faster than I anticipated. After about a few seconds one of the wheels was starting to wobble; a few more seconds had gone by and the other wheel started to wobble. Right after the second wheel started wobbling the turn was coming up; perfect timing.  Only now I knew this was not going to end well. Only if I had thought that before I decided to go down this prodigious hill.  Just as I was turning the back wheel did something funny and sent me forward into the sharp crumbly gravel.

I landed on my shoulder, which is way better than having a face full of gravel, so I was kind of relieved on that part. As I got up I noticed the back part of my shirt now had a hole in it. Oh, great, I thought.  I guess  I kind of deserved that for not listening.  I looked over at my shoulder, and it looked like I’d come out of the show Survivor or something;  my shoulder looked appalling.   I saw my mom walking to me, and she didn’t look surprised, but I sure was.  It took me a few seconds to realize what just happened. My shoulder was bloody, and likewise for my knee and leg. As my mom approached me she asked what happened;  I just thought, it's pretty self explanatory by the looks of me and my scooter, which was now in the middle of the road. She grabbed my scooter and we walked home,  water dripping from eyes. We didn’t say much on the way home. I passed a few neighbors, and they just kind of stared weirdly.  When we got home I threw my meaningless scooter on the grass; I plopped on my bed, not wanting to move, and I  didn’t move for a while. Briefly after I switched into more comfortable clothes, put a bandage on my shoulder, ankle, and leg and then plopped back on my bed and didn’t move for pretty much the rest of the day.

I was unaware of it that day, but as I look back at the detrimental hill, I learned a valuable lesson, but I can’t exactly sum it all up in a few words. However, basically I learned that sometimes I need to slow down and stop to think about what I’m about to be doing and focus more on the outcome of the situation. Big or small, everything has a  consequence, whether it's negative, positive or maybe in the middle.

-Nisrene Banhar