When I was 10 years old my younger brother and I were playing in the spare bedroom, and I thought we could get a better view of Okanagan Lake if we used a chair to get up and sit on the window sill. My brother leaned against the screen in the window which fell out and he barely grabbed onto the window frame as he fell out with it. This was up two stories and there was a concrete sidewalk below him.
My first thought was that I couldn't help him out so I ran downstairs to my mom and yelled at her to help him. She was on the phone, screamed and dropped the phone, running as fast as she could upstairs. Everything ended up fine, and my brother was young enough that it didn't bother him too much, but it's terrifying to think that I could have seriously injured or killed my brother because of a stupid idea like that. It felt like 2 minutes passed to get her to help, but it was only 15 seconds or so in reality.
Just writing this gives me the same feeling in the pit of my stomach as when it happened then. I know when my brother brings it up it does that to my mom as well. Every other dumb thing I ever did as a kid pales in terms of how badly someone could have been hurt.
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