We began the evening by eating dinner at a fancy restaurant inside the Disneyland resort. Although I can’t remember much, I can vaguely remember how good the food was, a fantastic start to the evening. After dinner, my parents let my sister and I go to play and explore the playground. We often went to play after dinner so it seemed normal, but what happened after was quite the opposite.
We had discovered some old wagons, which were part of the Wild West themed playground. I noticed there was only one seat in the front carriage; it was a rather strange looking seat. I was confused; it had a great big spring underneath, so I asked my dad what it was for. He replied “That’s the olden days alternative to our more modern suspension in our cars. It absorbs the shock when the driver goes over a bumpy road. It’s really bouncy.”
The list of opportunities was endless, so many things to do with this one ‘bouncy’ chair. I had to begin by testing its bounciness with my hands, it seemed very springy to begin with. As a result, I moved on to jumping up and down on it, it became very wobbly. So unstable it was becoming hard to control. I began to lose my balance, and then, it was almost as if I’d been pushed from behind. I was thrown off the carriage and took a hard landing onto the concrete/bark chip ground.
I burst out screaming with pain the instant I realised I’d damaged myself, although it took me a while to realise that the immense pain which I was experiencing was coming from my head. The reality of it suddenly hit me, I almost sprinted back to my parents who sensed something was wrong from the first sight of me clasping my head with both hands, still in tears.
Around five minutes later, my mum and I were in the car on the way to the French accident and emergency, so I could have my head examined by a doctor. The language barrier was preventing my mum from explaining to the French doctor in a white coat, exactly what had happened. This resulted in a stream of questions being shouted out at me, which I found rather scary as I was only six years old, all this French was proving to be rather confusing and obviously I had no idea what to say so I just let my mum take control of the conversation.
Eventually, the doctor decided I would need stitches to cover the crack in the middle of my forehead. After numerous hours in the French hospital, eventually I came out with approximately four stitches down my forehead. We got into the car and drove back to our resort to meet my dad and my sister and tell them all about it.
The next day, almost everything was back to normal. I was no longer in pain and looking forward to whatever we had planned for the day. The only evidence that anything had even happened was the stitches, apart from that there was, nothing. All was well, and we were on our way to the beach, simply laughing at my stupidity from the night before.
