Breaking My Neck

I did break my neck.  I have never broken any other bone in my body before or since that one spring day in 8th grade.  Where did this come from?  A teacher friend broke her wrist last week during a routine fire drill.  Bummer, I know.  We started about bones we had broken and their stories.  Of course I had to open with, "I broke my neck once."  HA!  Sounds funny now too.  Anyway, I know you are dying to hear the story and of course I will tell it. 

I was int he 8th grade, in PE class and the teacher went down to hang the attendance slip.  Do you even remember when the attendance was hung outside the room?  Crazy.  Now we do attendance on the computer in about 2 seconds while in the classroom.  Much safer.  So, of course when the teacher went downstairs a few of us started doing flips...running as fast as we could, jumping on the vault and flipping over the horse.  What fun!  As I was telling this to my colleagues I was cracking up: #1 This was not just PE class, it was PE in the special gym for gymnastics.  It was a full gym with tons of gymnastics equipment...and super fun.  #2 I had to imagine doing these flips in my 8th grade body and mind!  Whew!  I know I can still run and jump on a vault...but go into a hand-stand and flip over?  Yikes!  So, back in time to 8th grade...I run.  I jump.  I go into a full hand-stand and then fail to flip over.  I land on my head on this side of the horse.  Apparently inches from the corner of the vault, but that was never really confirmed except by my 8th grade friends at the time.  I crumpled into a ball.  The kids gatherer around.  The teacher returned.  I was then instructed to walk to the guidance room and call  my mother.  Believe it or not?  Well, sad but true I did walk there with a friend and called my mom.  What happened after that was I went for x-rays and they found that my 7th vertabre almost pulled completely apart.  Break?  Well, the doctor did say that I did the most damage without really doing any real damage.  Scary.  three weeks in a full neck-brace, hating life, then a few more weeks in a smaller neck-brace.  Totally hated every second of it and remember throwing it in the garbage can! 

So, fast-forward a few decades and I still worry that the scar tissue will cause me some problem in the future, that something will cause it to "break" again or worse yet...I will have a desire to run and jump and do a flip off a vault!  HA! 

What have you broken lately?