Okay so I may have exaggerated a bit... It was more of a stream then a river. But everything else was true I swear. Now before I switch to first person (the I voice) I'm going to tell you that it gets better the longer you read, that or I just have an odd sense of humor, but everyone always tells me I'm really funny so that probably isn't the case. Well I should stop rambling and start the story.
The rocks in front of me look slippery and I can't be sure if their stable, and though I know there is a far easier way to cross this large stream... I hop across the rocks and land gracefully(ish) on the other side. I'm walking along a stream, it runs through one of my favorite parks but I never looked at where it came from so that's what I decided to do with this fine summer day. (I also happen to be collecting broken pieces of glass I find in the river(Don't worry I do this alot but this is one of the only times it ended badly)) I look back across the river, there's another set of larger rocks, I lean over and test one, putting a little weight on it. It moves a little I I shift my foot closer to the other side and try again, this time it doesn't shift. I step on the rock then quick take a large step back to the other side of the riverbank, which now consists on a wire fence and an incline my feet barely manage to grip in my worn sneakers. (these sneakers are promptly thrown out after this adventure).
I keep this up, wending my way along the stream until I reach a point where there are three large slabs of stone that the water runs over like a waterfall, but some parts of the rock are dry and I swiftly hop one two three and reach the top. There is a little island of dirt and a tree that parts the stream, its about 6 feet long and two feet wide. I jump between there and the side of the stream. a few feet ahead of this is a fallen tree that fell over the little river. I'm tempted to walk across it like a tightrope but refrain from doing so. After a few more minutes I reach the mouth of the stream which is ... a city water duct thingy? It's not a sewer, Its something my town does to connect streams when they want to make a land bridge connecting two sides. Its weird and I don't really understand it but I same this and just as I thought about walking in it three girls come running from the backyard of a house adjacent to the park grounds. Now this took place last summer, (2020) so, being the good-girl-who-didn't-want-covid that I was and who didn't have a mask on her, I ran the other way. I don't know if the girls were confused about why this teenager with a mysterious bag was running away from them along the river but maybe they were. They followed me. I ran faster. They kept up. I went even faster. It is at this point that I reached the shifty slippery rocks, I was almost at the parking lot. But being the idiot I am I forgot that this rock in particlar was shifty and slippery and at the speed and carelessness I was going it was no surprise that I-
I slammed knee first into a rock then the hand that I hand reached out to catch myself met a sharp bit of glass and- That was the only time my precious glass ever betrayed me. so now with a scraped bleeding knee and a sliced palm, and clothes and a bag that were all completely soaked I...
A. Kept running
B. Turned around and yelled at the girls to leave the glass monster girl alone
C. Walked off onto the dry trail next to the river that was there all along that I somehow hadn't noticed
Vote now on your phones!
Spoiler alert I kept running. Somehow I made it the rest of the way back to the parking lot without slipping again, despite being soaked in dirty stream water. I sat at the edge of the baseball field and texted my mom.
"hey can you pick me up that the park, and bring a towel and a band aid. Some kids were chasing me in the woods behind the park and I tripped in the stream."
While I waited for my mom to text back I poured half my water bottle into my mouth since I was dehydrated and somehow it hadn't broken when I fell in the river, and used the other half to try to rinse out my cuts incase I got infected or something(I have no medical knowledge so I was probably being an idiot, but in the moment it felt smart). My mom texted back a few moments later,
"I'm at the lake but I'll text dad."
Now I have no idea what she told my dad but a few minutes later he pulled up and asked me "are you okay?" then he looked around, saw the cop that sometimes is stationed at the park and asked me "wait why didn't you go to him?"
"Dad, One I don't have a mask, Two I tripped that's not a big deal."
"Yeah but if some boys were harassing you-"
"What?" I was confused, what in hell had mom told him?
"Mom said some stupid teenage boys were chasing you?" I started laughing, hard.
"Dad, they were eight year old girls." I then got in the car with the towel, and when my mom got home we had a big laugh about it.
That's all for now!
Love Ya,
Lissa