I never thought that a place I loved so much was somewhere I could almost lose my life .The barn was on a back road about four miles from my house. The barn is about as long as two basketball courts and as wide as a football field, absolutely huge.
Growing up my dad was friends with a guy named Tracy. Tracy had a distinct look; he was about six foot three inches, bald, but with grey and white hair on the side of his head, and skinny as a pole. My dad always brought me up to the barn when I was five because I loved to play with the little calves, they were my best friends. This was when I decided that I wanted to do something with cows. When I was eight years old I decided I wanted to show cows. To show cows it meant you brought your cows to fairs, one would walk around the rink and the judge would look at the cow. The judge would pick the best cows to the not so good cows. I fell in love with showing.

I went to the barn everyday after school, along with my friends that I met at the barn Paige, Brian, Heath, Adam, and my sister Shandell. We went to the barn at six o’clock when Tracy did chores. We didn’t exactly help out with chores; we mostly went upstairs in the barn and made hay forts. I was little and couldn’t lift up hay bails, so Brian and Heath picked the hay bails and stacked them on top of each other. Brian and Heath always push me down and I acted like it didn’t hurt me because I wanted them to think I was tough. I also thought Brian was cute so I acted like a big shot.

There was this one night I will never forget at the barn. My dad and mom brought my sister and I up to the barn so they could go out to dinner. I was so excited to go to the barn because I knew that Paige and Heath would be there. When I first got there I started playing with the newborn calves. I loved them. They were as tall as my hip and a tan color. My favorite calve had a white diamond on her forehead. Heath, Paige, and Shandell asked if I wanted to go upstairs to the hayloft and build hay forts with them. I jumped for joy with a huge smile on my face and yelled, “YESS!”
To get to the hayloft one had to climb up this ladder that had sticks two feet away from each other that would step onto, the ladder was fourteen feet to the top. Nobody liked to go up the ladder because it was not sturdy, I didn’t mind going up the ladder, but I sure did not like going down. We went up into the hayloft and Heath started lifting bails and stacking them on top of each other. I don’t remember what happened but I fell down off the hay bales to the floor, along the ladder, head first onto the concrete floor. To this day I have no clue how I got over to the ladder and why or how I fell.. Nobody knew that I fell. Heath, Shandell, and Paige continued to play in the hayloft and Tracey and his friend Mike continued to milk the cows. Tracey told me that he thought that a hay bail had dropped to the floor. Finally he got curious and found out it was me knocked unconscious. He immediately lifted me up and called everybody downstairs and told them that they had to bring me to my parents. Heath was shaking in fright, Paige was crying, and Shandell was bawling her eyes out because she thought she just lost her sister. Halfway to going and getting my dad and mom and I came back, I had no clue what was going on. I opened my eyes and saw that I was lying on Mike’s lap, Heath was holding my toes, and my sister has both my hands in her hands. I was quite curious why everybody was staring at me. I said “WHAT?” They told me what happened and that they were bringing me to my parents. I was still confused on what was going on.
We finally got to the Red Mill and Tracy went inside to tell my parents what just happened. When my parents came out I told them I needed to go to the bathroom, because I felt like I was going to throw up. I remember going into the restaurant and everything was blurry. I kept seeing blue and red flashing lights. I asked my mom if she saw them too, but she had no idea what I was talking about. I finally got into the bathroom and threw up all over the place. My mom said I must just have a minor concussion. A couple days went by and my parents decided to bring me to the hospital, when I got to the hospital they sent me to Dartmouth because the damage was bad. I didn’t want to ride in the car anymore I had a headache and was so dizzy and would throw up, the last thing I wanted to do was drive two hours to another hospital. When I got to Dartmouth they wanted to do a CAT scan on my head. When the CAT scan came back, it showed that I had fractured my skull and I had bleeding in my brain. The doctors said I was very lucky to be alive and they wanted me to stay over.

When I got back from the hospital a couple days after, I went back to the barn. I was a little nervous but I wanted to conquer my fear. When walking into the barn and smelling sawdust mixed with cows, I was happy I came back to the barn, and realized how much I missed it when I was hurt. It was then I noticed it wasn’t the barn I was afraid of it was the ladder. I went to the ladder, I looked at it and knew this was something I had to do, I picked one foot up and put it on the base of the ladder and continued up it. It took me a while to climb but when I finally got to the top I had no problem getting down. From this moment on I told myself I would never let anything stop me. Even though this tragic accident happened at the barn, it never changed my love for it.