The next creative writing exercise is a simple, sraightforward account of a physical accident you have had. This is tricky for me as I was a very clumsy child and have plenty of accidents to choose from so I took a little time deciding on which one to write about. I chose this one mostly because I have strong memories of both the incident and the after effects.
When I was young our house was positioned on a sloping section which led to a small wooded area where I sometimes played. The day of the accident I was on my own, playing in the shrubby edges of the woods when I caught sight of movement from the corner of my eye, I wasn't sure what it was so I listened carefully to gauge it's postion. I heard noises, briefly saw what I assumed was a rabbit and sprinted after it.
Not long after I lost sight of the rabbit, stopped running and kept quiet trying to pick up the trail again but all I heard was my own harsh breathing so I sat down for a rest, I had given up on finding the rabbit. That's when I noticed a small hole in the ground nearby, most likely a rabbit hole but that didn't interested me however something shiny was embedded in the wall of the hole and that did interest me. The accident happened when I leaned forward to excavate the shiny thing from the earth - a stick in the eye, it was half buried, poking out from the hole at an angle unnoticed as I was blinded by the potential treasure. When the stick stabbed me in the eye I rebounded and fell onto my backside with two thoughts running through my head - 1, my eye really, really, hurt and I needed to get to mum so she could fix me up because mums are good at that and 2, the unknown treasure was very attainable. Knowing I would never find the hole again this was my only chance to collect it so with one hand over my bad eye and the other frantically digging out the tresure with the offending stick I only took a couple of minutes to prise it free, take a quick peek and run home.
I landed myself in A&E for that little adventure, eye drops which stung badly for a couple of weeks and an eye patch which wasn't even cool - a thick white bandage over the eye for what seemed like the whole term but wasn't.
The upside was the treasure I found. When I got home from the hospital I could finally clean it up and examine it (with one eye). I was rewarded with a small decorative glass with sloping sides, a rose coloured strip around the base, a picture of a dog (an Alsatian I think) painted in black, white and grey on the body of the glass and a gold rim. I kept that little treasure for years on my bedroom shelf and it gave me pleasure far longer than the effects of the eye injury gave me bother so I guess I made on the deal.
This is the heavily edited version, I was surprised how much I remembered about this incident and I had to cut out a lot of irrelevant memories, probably should have cut more but couldn't quite manage to. Simple and straightforward is always hard for me as anyone who knows me can verify so I think I did an ok self editing job on this exercise.
This is a factual recount rather than creative writing but I can see the point of writing it - we all have a massive number of experiences, large and small, to draw on for inspiration. I don't know how inspiring this particular episode from my childhood is but this is the first memory I have about the thrill of finding treasure and that thrill is a wondrous thing, far better than a poke in the eye that's for sure.
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