The Mysterious Wound

This blog post was written by Jacob, my 3rd son.  He is 11 1/2 years old and has dyslexia.  Dyslexia is a diagnosis given to people who have great difficulty learning to read.  Jacob is brilliant (as most dyslexic people are) and has been blessed to have a phenomenal dedicated teacher who works with him for one hour, 5 days a week.  He is making great strides in reading, though it has taken much persistence and great effort on his part.  One of the tools that Jacob’s teacher has given me this year, is allowing Jacob the freedom to write, using me as his transcriber.  This has been such a fun, growing, freeing journey.  Rather then grueling over sentence after painstaking sentence, Jacob just tells me story after story.  The creativity, imagination,  and learning (of structure, storytelling, editing, word usage, and so much more), is all fully engaged.  I would have doubted the power of this type of writing 6 months ago, but now I am a believer.  The following story, Jacob “wrote” just this last week.  It’s all true.  I hope you enjoy it, as much as we did, writing together.

 

A week and a half ago, on a Saturday, I climbed up a hill behind my house. First we drove down the road and stopped at a store at the base of the hill and walked behind the store and started up the trail that led up the hill. It was covered with leaves. We began to climb at 5:00 p.m.. We only had an hour before sunset to make our goal, which was to climb up to where we could slide down with card board. Our hike involved avoiding trees, climbing up steep parts, and using a stick to poke around in front of us to make sure there were no snakes. I was carrying a water bottle and a big piece of card board. I traded it part way up with other people.

When we got up to the perfect place to slide we looked out over the land. We could see the lake, gazillions of tiny houses along with the airstrip and campus where we live. The grass was about 1-2 feet high in the shorter places. To get the grass to become a perfect trail for sliding we had to start at first with just a short little ride on the cardboard. Each time we went down, the trail got longer and longer and longer. We, my brothers and friends, went sliding, falling, laughing down the grassy hill and crawling back up. On the last ride I went sliding head first into the grass far down the trail. My friend came sliding in feet first beside me and it wedged my body and I couldn’t get out until she moved first.

 

Center left, you can see our “short” trail in the grass.

We knew that we needed to go down the hill at 5:35 p.m. because the sun was setting and soon it would be dark. Then we would not be able to find our way down the trail. On the way down I stepped on a stick that hit my upper shin and gave me a cut. It was a small cut with 2 little openings. It did not hurt that much. Little did I know that lurking inside the cut was a big mystery to be solved.

 

 

That night when we got back I did not pay any mind to the cut. The next day it hurt just a little and I put a Band-Aid on the cut that night with some antibiotic ointment. By Wednesday my Mom started putting hot compresses on my wound and she opened up a doxycycline pill and dumped a little bit of the powder on it and put a little bit of antibiotic ointment on it and then a Band-Aid. On Thursday my Mom put charcoal compresses on my leg. Charcoal brings out infection. A lot of gooey blood oozed out of my cut. Then on Friday my Mom put me on antibiotics, because she was worried that I was going to get a worse infection. Saturday morning, my Dad said at breakfast that my scab was coming off. After breakfast I thought maybe it was a Lego caught in my jelly blood. So then I bumped it and realized it was a splinter. The splinter was the size of the top of my thumb. The jelly blood helped it come out. My wound looked like a bloody volcano and there was a hole where the big splinter had come out.

A week and a half later I still have an opening on my leg. I can’t wait to go and ride down the hill again.