"Jump! Jump!" I heard the excited screams of several young boys. "What's the matter? Are you scared?" one of the boys yelled. I traveled further on up the narrow but rather clear path I had been following, where rows of trees make it hard to see anything but the trail in front of me.
Coming onto the lake, I saw all of the boys on a cliff over top a beautiful glistening lake. The water was nice and still, and the temperature around 90degrees, so the day was great for swimming. The boys were all on the edge of the cliff in their swimming trunks. Several beer cans lay all around.
"Well. Are you gonna jump or not?" one bellowed out to the skinny nervous boy peering over the edge. Then I began to think back to a year earlier when I had been in the same spot.
It was a really hot day in late July. A few friends and I had decided to go to Lake Vesuvius to swim and relax. My brother and I, who had been there many times before, lead the way to our favorite spot. It was a nice spot just below a large cliff that towered about 80-ft. above the water.
"I would jump off it," I said. No one really believed, however, that I would have the courage to do so.
After we had been at the lake for a while, and had been drinking beer for some time, someone dared me to jump.
"What's wrong?" they said, "You're not chicken are you?" So having to prove my manliness, and my better judgment already impaired, I trudged up the cliff. I took a few quick glances over the edge; that was enough to make my stomach start to tremble.
"Jump! Jump!" everyone began to chant. By this time the audience had grown, so there was no way out.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and as my heart started pounding, I ran 'til there was no ground beneath me. This isn't so bad I thought, the weightless feeling of free falling. It felt as if I was flying. It seemed like eternity, but I guess it was really only 3 or 4 seconds, until the landing that changed my life forever. Crack! Finally I reached the water, but not the way I had expected. I had landed on a tree.
The feeling in my legs was instantly gone. The only thing I could feel now was pain. "I'm O.K.," I told myself, as I struggled to pull myself onto shore. "I just need to walk it off." That's what I thought until I couldn't stand. The pain was unbearable; I thought that I must be dying.
Two hours later paramedics came and flew me to Cabell Huntington hospital where I awaited to hear the news from Dr. Weinswag, that I had shattered my 12th vertebrae. Most likely I would be paralyzed for the rest of my life from the waist down. I decided to undergo a surgical procedure that involved putting two titanium rods in my back, that would be held in place by several hooks and screws. Altogether the procedure took about 16hrs.
As I came back to the present I put aside all the memories I had of learning to walk again and of the year that had passed as I had slowly recovered, and overcome every restriction that I had been told I would have throughout life. I slowly forgot about the cast I had to wear that covered my entire upper body.
As I stood and watched, a smile came to my face as the nervous boy standing at the edge slowly backed off. As the other boys teased and ridiculed him for not jumping, and called him chicken, I wished that I had been brave enough to be called chicken. I then took off my shirt and went into the water for a quick swim. After I came out, the boy who had decided not to jump was now swimming close by, and asked, "Hey what's that scar on your back?" He was referring to the long jagged scar that runs from between my shoulder blades until it disappears into the waist band of my swimming trunks, lined with the small scars of 168 staples that had held the incision together.
I turned to the boy and said, "I jumped." The boy looked somewhat puzzled until I further explained to him my story. I then told him of my long road to recovery. They say you can never go back, and I know that is true, but this particular day it felt as if God had shown me a replay of that awful day that occurred almost one year ago. And today the outcome was much better, if only I had the courage of that boy to let them call me chicken.
By Dewayne Sammons
Return to Voices Table of Contents