These are two cases of self inflicted injuries in my childhood, quite unnecessary really, both of them. Some lessons are painful, and these are two of those. Sometimes I just had to prove something to myself, even if it was just what other people had told me.

I think I was about 7 and I had a bike. I loved it and would blat to the shops or down to my friends house, no problems. This one day, while biking to what we called ‘the 10 0’clock shop’ – probably no mystery as to why. Running parallel the very straight road, was another road with a row of houses, but was steeply dipped, coming up at the shop. So I decided to take the dipped road, with the intention of peddling as fast as I could down, so that it was a hard slog up, but you got some momentum behind you. Sounded like a solid plan, and it was.

Until for what would appear to be no reason at all, I started to wonder if what I had been told was true. Does your front wheel buckle if you let go while going fast? Now, you may think this thought might have just been dismissed and I continued on my speedy way. No. I wanted to know. Had to know. So, I did let go. And true to the information I had been given, my front wheel did buckle. I had not given thought to what really would happen next. What did happen next was a lot of pain, a fair amount of blood, some smashed in front teeth with one now missing, and a random lady coming out of one of the houses to help patch me up. I felt stupid, I’m not going to lie. And wasn’t really sure what it was that had made me do it, I had put logic to one side and just went for it. It scared me a bit, when I started to understand what I was capable to doing to myself. We are very breakable, and I guess as children it can be a hard time learning that.

Around the same time in my life, we had dogs, three of them. One of them in particular had an issue with things coming through the letterbox. Anything that came through was, for want of a better word, savaged. So, again, in my ridiculous childhood thought process, wondered. Could it be possible, that if I put my hand through the letterbox, will it get treated with the same contempt. You guessed it, i had to know. And the answer is yes, but only temporarily. In the dogs defense, as soon as he realised it was my hand, he let go, unfortunately his tooth had punctured one of my fingers, there was screaming, and lots of blood. A few stitches in my index finger and I was fine, but started to see a pattern forming. I didn’t trust what I was told and felt the need to prove these things, even at great cost to myself. It was here I think I first started to understand about instinct and how you are just going to have work out some things for yourself. Where others may be giving you really sound advice, take heed. That does not mean take the advice, but keep it in mind.

(c) K Wicks