Tyler Yegerlehner
English 101 .027
Essay #1 Revised
1,106

Major Accident

First off, this event happened in seventh grade. Throughout this entire story it must be remembered that we were idiots. Anyways, the story takes place in a small Indiana town called Mt. Vernon on a small farm just a little north of the actual town. It was around midday when I arrived at my friend’s house. His name is Seneca Weintraut. After I opened the door I noticed a familiar but somewhat unwelcome face. If Matt McDurmon had not been there that day it wouldn’t have been a special day at all. And therefore I would be writing about something completely different. I had no idea Matt would be there mainly because he wasn’t supposed to be. He rudely invited himself and he would certainly pay for it later that day.

We had nothing planned for the day ahead but we started it out with some ninja stars I had with me and a blow gun Seneca had kept in his basement. It was the weekend after Halloween so there were still some pumpkins lying about. We were throwing the stars and shooting the blow gun at the pumpkin. After ten minutes it was completely demolished and several of the stars and darts were lying in the now oozing pumpkin. Seneca piped up the idea to get out his two practice bows and several arrows and shoot them into the field and retrieve them after the stock was spent. There were two bows and six arrows, so this happened rather quickly.

At around one o’clock we were rather bored with this so we started having one person standing in the field while two people shot at him. This is where things got interesting. One time during this type of stupidity I shot the arrow and it was like slow mo. I could tell that if Squid (Seneca) didn’t move then that arrow was going to go through his neck. At just the right time Squid moved over one step and the arrow whistled past him. It was mind blowing; I should have realized he could have been killed, but I was too ecstatic to do so. So this neither hindered nor fully stopped the shenanigans. It only fueled our stupid ideas.

Next it was two people in the field and one on the hill. Each side had a bow and two arrows. It was make believe war. When Seneca was up on the hill by himself and Durmy was with me in the field I was shot right in the calf. It hurt like crazy but it wasn’t that bad. It only bled a little. So the game continued until the next incident which took place on the four-wheeler. Yes, we’re not holding anything back now.

This was how this game was set up. Two people were on the ATV. The one on the back had a bow and four arrows and there was a ground trooper nicknamed, “Rambo” running around taking cover in the trenches. ‘Rambo’ occasionally had to dive out of the way so as to not be shot. When I was on the ground this game almost ended earlier than it did.

Squid was driving with Durmy on the back. Three things happened with the positions as they were. One, right when Squid took off I shot at them and the arrow hit Durmy in the foot. That incident was nothing compared to what was about to happen. They kept driving and Durmy shot a few arrows back at me out of vengeance for his foot. The third arrow I shot was dead on except for the fact that Squid gunned it and the arrow whizzed behind Durmy’s head. They pulled over to talk to me about what had just happened. We had a momentary truce. “Oh my God! I felt and heard that arrow scream behind my head”. Durmy was absolutely right. I know that if Squid hadn’t sped up when he did Durmy would be dead. But nothing had happened so I just thought it was a good shot. In a past life I could have been Robin Hood.

The next incident took place within a minute after this. It didn’t even require a bow or an arrow. I guess Squid had remembered that last time he took off in close proximity to me he almost became a shish-cabob. So instead he just gunned it heading straight for his long gravel drive way. We had stopped and had our conversation in a field to the right of it. Now the drive is about two feet higher than the surrounding fields. He jumped the driveway with some major speed. I guess he’d either never ramped it with a person on the back or Matt wasn’t very secure to begin with, because the moment after the two front wheels touched down on the other side of the road a near catastrophe happened. Matt was barely hanging on to the back of the four-wheeler with his legs because his both his hands were flying all around the place. His back was almost parallel to the ground. I don’t know how he managed to hold on long enough till Seneca realized what was happening, turned around, and grabbed his sweat shirt and hauled him back up to sit properly on the four-wheeler. It was absolutely amazing to watch.

After that we put away the four-wheeler and went back to two people shooting from the field towards the person on the hill. We were about fifteen minutes away from going to see a movie when a scream banished that thought. Matt had started to scream that we shot him in the head. Now Matt isn’t exactly the most trusting character, so we spent about a minute trying to get the truth out of him. We didn’t believe him because he wouldn’t take his hand away from his head. Turns out the arrow had sunk about two inches into his head. The arrow struck him on the right side of his head near his temple but parallel to the front to the back of his head.

There were most definitely some consequences to his major accident. None were too bad though. We destroyed the bows and arrows and an apology was in order but the same could have happened to any of us. No damage was done to him except the puncture wound. He had two stitches over the wound and he healed up just fine. He only spent a night in the hospital. But the fact remains that he was extremely lucky. We all were.