Читать книгу Becoming a Counselor - Samuel Gladding T., Samuel T. Gladding - Страница 14

Whenever someone asks me if I have a good illustration of a situation involving choices, I smile and quickly respond. I am not sure why I smile (it probably has to do with reflexes). I do know why I respond. I have a rather graphic illustration. It happened during the exploratory preschool time of my life. My older brother, Russell, and his friend, Bill G. (from the previous chapter), were climbing up to the rafters of Bill’s garage. I wanted to be with them, but I could not climb the ladder on the inside of the structure.

Seeing my plight, my brother and Bill tried to be helpful. They threw down a rope from above and told me to tie it around my waist. I did so awkwardly but enthusiastically and with great anticipation. Then they started pulling me to the rafters. All went well for about 10 to 15 feet, whereupon the rope slipped. Such slippage would have been fine in most cases, but the place where the rope slipped with considerable force was around my neck. Unbeknownst to my brother and his friend, they were hanging me.

The good news is that within a few seconds my brother looked down and saw the noose and my beet-red face. He had to make a split-second decision as to what to do as he realized what was happening. With my head almost to the top of the platform where it and my body would have found a solid surface, he made a fateful decision. “Let him go,” he yelled, “or we will kill him!”

Being about 20 feet off the ground by then I wanted to reply, “But if you choose to drop me, you may also end my life.” Unfortunately, because my windpipe had been closed off, I could not say anything. Windless and limp, I followed the force of gravity to the ground, which was a concrete driveway. The trip down was quick (although it seemed like an eternity and could have made that word a part of my history). Before anyone could say “Farewell,” I made a thud, like a sack of potatoes being dropped from a roof, and the back of my head hit the cement!

At that point, my brother hurried down the ladder, looked me over, untied the noose, and quickly ran home swearing to my mother that he had nothing to do with what she was about to behold. My head was like a coconut cracked open with a stone. The only difference was that blood began pouring out, rather than coconut juice, and whereas coconuts are silent, I was anything but. Neighbors came running, dogs began barking, babies stopped crying, and my grandmother, from four houses away, made the innocent and objective remark to my mother that it sounded like someone was dying (which was more true than she knew). Bill’s mother carried me home to my visibly shaken mother, who got another neighbor to drive her to the doctor with me in her lap, my head wrapped in towels, looking like a Middle Eastern sheik. Two hours later I returned home with a dozen stitches, a pound of gauze, a headache, and a much calmer maternal unit. I had the stitches from the adventures for a few days and sported a red rope burn around my neck for more than a week. I remember my grandmother, Pal, saying to me that my head would heal before I married. She was right, but sometimes my wife wonders if my head should be examined once more.