"Bij, check this out!"
I looked up, perturbed that Taylor had disturbed my intense reading, only to find my best friend hanging by his legs like an idiotic monkey from the jungle gym.
"That's really cool, Taylor..." I was nine years old, and, having just discovered sarcasm, I used it every chance I got. I turned back to my book.
"No, really, I want you to watch this," he pleaded.
"OK, OK." I set down my book and turned to watch. Taylor climbed, flipped, twisted, jumped and twirled all over the playground set. I had to admit that I was pretty impressed at his flexibility.
"Would you teach me how to do that?" I asked him.
"Oh, so now you think I'm cool. Fine, I'll only teach you if you say 'Taylor is the bomb' really, really loudly." The slight, barely detectable note of resentment in his voice made me feel really guilty.
"Taylor is the bomb." I said as quietly as I could. I couldn't concede to him so easily.
"Louder! I can't hear you!" he crowed.
"TAYLOR IS THE BOMB! OK, you promised to teach me."
"Come up here. Or better yet, I'll come down. Hang on a second."
As I turned away to put down my book, I heard a sickening thud, followed by a scream that sent cold shivers down my spine. I whipped around to find him cringing on the ground, clutching his head in agony.
"Oh, my god, Taylor!" I panicked, rushing over to him. "What happened?"
"I fell ... I fell and hit my head really hard against the monkey bars," he sobbed. I looked up at the bar six feet above my head, then down at my best friend. Trembling, I pulled his hands away to find a giant gash on the top of his head, his blood mingling with sand. I looked around for a teacher, but I couldn't see anything through the sudden flood of tears.
"Don't worry, it's going to be OK." A small crowd of our classmates began to gather. In the dirty sand, I held Taylor's hand and comforted him for what seemed like an eternity. When a teacher finally came, I breathed a sigh of relief, but when she discreetly but urgently told one of her colleagues to call an ambulance, I was confused. "He doesn't need an ambulance," I wanted to tell them, "He's fine! See, he's even stopped crying." The teacher asked Taylor how he felt.
"OK, I guess. My head's throbbing, though," he responded.
"Can you stand up for me, please?" We all watched, holding our breath, as Taylor groggily got to his feet, smiled and then passed out in a dead faint. My heart nearly stopped as I realized Taylor was hurt much more seriously than I had wanted to believe. I wanted to follow him to the hospital, but none of the teachers would let me. "Go back to your class," they told me, as if nothing had happened. I spent the rest of the day frustrated and scared. When 3:00 p.m. rolled around, my mom, the bearer of bad news, finally came.
"Sweetie, I just spoke with Taylor's dad. He said that when Taylor fell, he cracked his head open." She soothed me, "He'll be fine. They just have to staple his skull together so it will heal."
I couldn't believe the words that were coming out of her mouth. This was all because of me. If I hadn't asked him to teach me how to do flips on the jungle gym, we'd be racing our bikes down our narrow street right now. Instead, he's stuck in a hospital somewhere, getting his head stapled shut. I felt horrible.
The next few days were tense. Finally, Taylor came home with a white bandage on his head. I rushed over and hugged him with all my might.
"Are you OK? How does your head feel? When are you coming back to school? What was the hospital like? Were they mean to you?" The barrage of questions made him laugh, then wince.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I can take the bandage off in a few weeks."
Taylor and I became closer that year because of the accident. Soon, we were inseparable. We thought we would be friends forever. But one day, the news every kid fears came to Taylor, and he and his family moved away to Northern California. We called each other often in the beginning, but, after a while, the calls became less and less frequent. As we grew older, our conversations became awkward, and it was obvious we had grown apart. Feeling a little nostalgic the last time we talked, I began to reminisce.
"Taylor, do you remember that time you fell off the jungle gym and cracked your head open?"
"Yeah. That sucked. It was really painful."
"I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry. You wouldn't have fallen if I hadn't asked you to teach me all those monkey bar tricks."
"What do you mean, you're sorry?" He sounded puzzled.
"I'm just sorry, that's all. What?"
"I don't seem to remember you being there for some reason. Are you sure you were there?"
I couldn't speak for a few seconds. That incident caused me so much agony and pain — watching him writhe on the sand, desperately waiting for him to come home, feeling so guilty that it was partly my fault — and he didn't even remember that I was there.
It was then that I realized how far apart we had grown. No longer was I Taylor's best friend; now I was just a fading memory. It hit me rather hard. Taylor had been an influential part of my childhood, and, maybe once, I was influential to him, too. How humbling it is to look at someone you were once so close to and see the many miles now in between.
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