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The Almost Dead Man
When I was 10, I thought my dad was a dead man. It happened when I was watching T.V. in my basement. I was watching ESPN when I heard my dad moaning, “Karen!” My dad was cutting carpet in the office so I instinctively thought he was calling my mom’s name to get her to help him take the carpet scraps to the dumpster. My dad called for my mom again. I heard my mom walking on the treadmill so I got off the couch and started ascending the stairs. When I was on the last set of stairs I heard my dad moan again. Now that I was closer to him I could hear him better and I could tell it was not a moan of annoyance but a moan of pain. I tried to sprint up the stairs but as fast as I went it felt as if I was running up an escalator the wrong way. Every second felt like hours. When I reached the top of the stairs I looked into the office and all I saw was my dad with his hand around his wrist and blood seeping through his fingers. I stood there for a second or two and did what every kid does when something goes wrong. I screamed, “Mom!” Even with the treadmill on, she could hear me calling her. She got upstairs to the office so fast she must have teleported. Immediately she started telling me to get things for her and then went to caring for my dad. I subconsciously did what she told me to do when really all of her words were bouncing through my head like the super-bouncy balls you get out of a gumball machine. When my mom got my dad’s arm bandaged up, she called 911. An ambulance came immediately and my mom and dad boarded it and left. I was left at my neighbor’s house to sit there and think. A few hours later my parents came home and made me dinner. All my dad had left from the cut was a lot of stitches and dead skin. I asked him how he had managed to cut his wrist with the knife. He just plainly stated, “The knife slipped when I was cutting the rug and cut me.” He also told me, “Dan, a quarter of an inch to the left or right, and you would be looking at a dead man.” I felt extremely lucky at that moment to have my dad with me and to this day I still do. The next day I threw the knife as far into the woods as I could so it would never hurt my dad again.
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Favorite Quote:
"Don't punish yourself," she heard her say again, but there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness too. That was writing."<br /> --Markus Zusak, "The Book Thief"