Sunflower Yellow.

I fancied myself to be a gymnast. It was 7th grade and it seemed like the right thing to do. There wasn't much else to do in Wyoming, so my sisters and I threw ourselves into various and random sporting events; namely Tae Kwon Do and Gymnastics.

It wasn't that I was particularly bad at gymnastics, it was simply a matter of size. I wasn't built like the Ross girls. They were strangely petite and they could hurdle their bodies over bars and through the air in ways that I could never dream of.

However, I made a valiant attempt to be a good gymnast. I tried very hard and I trained a lot. I made it all the way to Advanced Level 2, which was the second highest level one could reach at the Cody School of Gymnastics. I competed in a few meets, which was exciting because I got to create my own floor routine, complete with music. I stayed true to my awkward Evangelical junior high self, and chose Michael W. Smith's "Ashland" as my floor routine jam.

My coach was absolutely crazy. She was extremely overweight, with short hair and a loud raspy voice. To this day, I don't know how she actually coached us because she could hardly move. She would wear baggy shorts and you could see her legs, which were always covered with weird sores or blotches. My parents told me later that they thought she had AIDS. I have no idea if this is actually true.

One day, coach decided that the Advanced 2 girls were too advanced for the large crash pad that would cushion our falls when we were practicing the Vault. Instead of the usual crash pad, she put down a thin mat and challenged us to a contest. It was a contest to see who could get the most height on a Straddle Vault. I'm terribly competitive and knew that this was a challenge that I was willing to accept. I ran at that vault with all of my might, I hit that springboard with force and determination...and I got a LOT of air on that beautiful vault.

There was just one problem: I got cocky. I dropped my legs sooner than I should have, and my right toe grazed the top of the vault. This one movement was enough to send my body flying forward and before I knew it I was heading face-first into the mat. I did what any normal person would do - I threw my arms out in a desperate attempt to save myself.

I did, indeed, save my face. My left arm, however, was quite another story.

I heard the cracking and the popping and I didn't have to look down to know what damage had been done. My left arm was burning and the whole world was a blur. They called my dad, he needed to take me to the hospital. I had broken my arm, and I'd broken it badly. Looking and my limp and deformed arm on that mat was sickening. It was twisted in ways that I didn't think that arms or bones could go. I waited on that mat for what felt like an eternity. Later, I found out that my dad had been mowing the lawn and decided he needed a shower before he took me to the ER.

Driving up to the ER, I remember thinking to myself that speed bumps in an ER parking lot are a terrible idea. WIth every bump that we hit, my arm throbbed. I hated the hospital for those speed bumps.

The next 12-24 hours were some of the more miserable hours in my life. The X-Rays were excruciating; really, it just seems cruel to make someone move their broken bones that much without any pain killers. I'd broken my arm in 4 places. They put me under and tried to set my arm to no avail. I was going to need surgery. Apparently I was in surgery for a long time - they put 2 metal plates and 8 screws in my arm that night.

I woke up in a strange hospital room with a broken TV. A lady from our church stopped by to visit and told me that her Grandmother had died earlier that week in the very same room. I had poor veins, apparently, and the nurses kept moving my IV. They finally settled on the top of my right hand, and neglected to check on me for a number of hours after doing so. The needle wasn't actually in my vein and proceeded to fill my right hand with the pain killers that were supposed to be flooding my system and bringing me sweet, sweet relief. I got no such relief; instead, I was rewarded with a horrible burning sensation in my hand every hour when the pain killers were dispersed through the malfunctioning IV. By the next morning my hand was huge and swollen and black and blue.

My cast was enormous. I was in a big "sunflower" phase of life, so I chose yellow for the color. They didn't tell me that the yellow that had was an obnoxious neon yellow, as opposed the buttery sunflower yellow I had envisioned. I looked like a big fat neon dork and I hated it. This neon cast would be my prison for the next two months.

That broken arm ruined my summer, plain and simple. There was no swimming with the girls in the pool at the Dude Ranch. There was no barrel racing or horse back riding.

And...there was no more gymnastics.
I quit.
I think deep in my heart of hearts, I knew that I wasn't cut out to be a gymnast. The broken arm gave me my perfect out. I quit the Cody School of Gymnastics that day and never looked back.