As I get closer to my 30th birthday I find myself reflecting a lot (hence all of these memory lane posts) and more than anything I just feel thankful for making it this far. Lord knows I've tried my best to take myself out. Let's see there was:
Nearly Drowning
Setting Fires
Electrocution
Falling out of carnival rides
And so many more. Still, nothing says "I want to live" like surviving a good old fashioned hanging.
I was an only child til I was about nine so I had a lot of alone time. When you add that to my vivid imagination, "too smart for my own good" ideas and just a tad bit of child neglect it's only a matter of time before you end up with a self-lynching. When I was about six years old I had this really long rope/clothesline that I used for all of my brilliant inventions. I made this really random rube goldberg machine that was our "security system" where, after opening the front door, an umbrella would swing down and hit you in the head. It was as lame as it sounds, but six year old me liked it.
Anyway...One particular day I tried to play superhero. I started off as Batman and tried to "scale" the tree in front of the house. DC trees, especially the ones owned by the city on the sidewalk are usually pruned so that they grow really high. I made a grappling hook by tying the rope to a small gardening shovel and tossing it up into the tree. I made it about two feet off the ground before the branch snapped.
"Batman sucks anyway." I moved on to being Superman. My grandmother lives in a row house and the front porch sits about fifteen feet off the ground, like a deck almost. I tied one end of the rope to the railing and the other end of the rope around my chest and under my armpits. Then I jumped off. The first thing I noticed was the intense pain as the rope tightened and started cutting into my chest and armpits. I'm no boy scout, but I'm guessing I tied a slip knot. The second thing I realized was that I didn't have a plan to get down.
I was dangling off the ground and the rope was really starting to cut off circulation, so I kind of kicked back and forth until I could reach this little ledge underneath the porch. I made it, pulled one arm out of the rope and then, just as I was pulling the other arm out, I slipped. The rope tightened around my neck and then I had a brand new problem: asphyxiation. Not being able to breathe surprisingly ranked lower than the pain of the thing tightening around my neck and all the blood rushing to my eyes.
If you thought I was kicking before, you should've seen me then. "Live Dammit Live!" I was too low to reach the ledge now and ironically my pointed toes were less than an inch off the ground. I was just high enough to not touch the ground. In my head this went on for about half a day, but obviously I can't be trusted to give you the real approximation. I just know that right before things went dark, I kicked my way to a pile of junk near the basement door and stood up on it enough to breathe and pull the rope from around my neck.
Five minutes later, the rope was in the trash and I went in the house and played Atari like a normal child.
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