Hi everyone! Today Thomas want to tell you his story about the foolishness, the childhood and the trauma he have got for the term of his life. "We’ve been growing up in a big company of children, playing together in the street. We had parents, but they all worked like horses, and had almost no time left for raising children. It was normal for everyone who lived in our district. But we seemed to be quite adequate children - we neither were hooligans, nor did something forbidden. We just played our children's games until our parents returned home.
And then Adam and his mother moved to the apartment in our midst. Adam’s mom also worked, like normal parents around, so Adam was quickly accepted into our brotherhood of street fellows. And he started to acquaint us bit by bit with all the customs of his previous friends. Our clique was variegated and consisted of boys and girls from ten to seventeen-year-olds, so many outright lousy ideas of spending time were nipped in the bud. For example, none of us was going to vandalize something or run into the woods and play hide-and-seek there, because that could cause serious consequences and we could be given a slap on the wrist from our parents.
But one of the ideas took root unexpectedly radically. We began to play a game called “I bet you can't beat this”. This phrase could be heard everywhere, literally from every angle. “I bet you can't miss a lesson” or “I bet you can't sneak into the garden of your neighbors and take some flowers from there”. For some reason, we didn’t see the boundaries between the game and the crime.
For example, once I climbed over the window to the apartment of the old lady living nearby. She was frightened, almost to death, but fortunately she didn’t call the police. That time my parents gave me the tawse, and my friends just patted me on the shoulder and said that I was “a hero”.
There was a large sandlot behind the houses, where people had been walking their dogs and the athletes used to jog. There it was possible to find very strange things and some of them were really old, made a long ago. We could find coins, bullet cases and even some lost cheap jewelry. Then Adam handed over all the finds to the pawnshop and bought ice cream for everyone for the earned money. I suspected that there was much more money there than he used to spent on the ice cream. But this has nothing to do with this story.
In theory, after so much time under the ground, they should have been at least damp and there was no chance for them to explode.
“I bet you can't throw this one” Adam said, giving to me one of those shells. Before that, the other guys had already thrown several of them into fire and nothing happened. So I agreed. I threw it, waited a little and then even came closer when I realized that nothing would happen at all. I even bent down to roll out the shell out of the fire.
And then it suddenly exploded! The sound was so loud that everyone around me went deaf for some time. Then my friends started to hear sounds again, but I didn’t... I saw Adam trying to say something to me, but I heard only a noise in my ears and then I lost consciousness. I woke up in the hospital, with a rewound head being as deaf as a post. I completely stopped hearing. The doctor wrote that the eardrums had burst and could not be restored. So I became the hearing impaired child.
End of story. That was the end of my career as a musician, which I dreamed of. That was also the end of my happy life and a childhood full of fun. Because of one stupid “I bet you can't…” I lost my health without the opportunity to somehow rehabilitate myself. Only then I realized that my new state of health was forever and there was no one to blame except myself.
I went through a long way of rehabilitation, learned to live without hearing, then re-learned to hear again using a special apparatus. Now I am 18, and I will never become a great guitarist, simply because the sounds from the apparatus are not at all the same as the human ear can hear. I have to learn a profession in which my vision is more important - I am going to become a programmer.
On the other hand, I can easily live and work with my injury. And really, it could have ended much worse, for example, my head could be completely taken off or something else terrible could happen. Well at least I calm myself in this way when I feel bummed".
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