When was the first time you ever got the breath knocked out of you?

Playing drop.

The first time I remember, my mother recalls an earlier event, I was probably 11 or 12. I was roller skating with friends, in a neighborhood with a lot of hill, steep hills, and we got the bright idea to go flying down one of the hills. Great until I hit a rock, when flying and landed hard , flat on my back. We weren’t too bright. A few days later, went down the same hill. It was fun, that time!

I fell off the monkey bars onto my back. I was at school and probably 7 or 8.

@cak Twelve year olds just aren’t all that bright to begin with! But…experiences like that are how we live to become bright!

@wilma Yup! Way to go!

@wilma: I’m pretty sure I experienced that fall, too! Good old monkey bars!

I think I was 8, but maybe 7. I had been helping my daddy build the back porch on our house. We were to the point that all we had left to do was put the boards on top. He would regularly walk across the supports to get from where we were working to where he had extra tools in the yard. I decided I would do the same. He told me to get down and go the other way, but I insisted I was fine and kept going. Naturally, I slipped. I landed on my stomach right on top of one of the supporting beams (about an inch thick since it was positioned on it’s side). It took quite a while before I caught my breath, and I did not try walking across the supports again.

@cak did you ever get good enough to skip a bar, take two bars at a time even though it meant letting go of the first one before you grabbed the third one? And make it all the way through?

@bobbinhood Ga! You’re lucky that’s all you got away with!

@Dutchess_III It’s true. I hadn’t thought about that before, but I am grateful that was all that happened.

@Dutchess_III I did! Probably because we spent so much time at my Aunt’s house climbing and jumping off things, all day long. I was the smallest in the family, but I had to keep up with the cousins. Good thing I was a light little thing, I flew through the air.

@cak Climbing, jumping, crawling, building…...Were you The Tether Ball Champ too?? I was. I think those are gone now, too. They just got scared of me cause I was so good and I think that’s why they took them all away…

My Dad let me climb the ladder to his attic workshop when I was 2 years old. When he looked away, I fell to the kitchen floor below. My Mom yelled “Oh, Daddy, you killed the baby.”
When I caught my breath again, I just got up and acted like nothing happened.

@Dutchess_III Tether ball is not gone! We had it at both of the camps I’ve counseled at. The junior highers love it.

@Dutchess_III OOOOHHH! You’re bringing back some cool childhood memories. We had one in our backyard. My sister was better. I haven’t seen one of those in years!

ROFL!! “Oh Daddy you killed the baby!!!”!!! I gotta tell Rick! Oh! Hurts!

@cak They’re probably illegal now. Somebody probably lost their face and stuff. You know.

I was 3, and had been thrown against a wall on the roof of the apartment block I was living in by a very angry and mentally unwell man who was not my father, but who’d married my birth mother.

@YARNLADY That is funny!

@Dutchess_III We used to climb out of the playhouse, when my mother wasn’t looking. Climb the oak tree next to it, and slide down the pole for the tether ball. We had to do it when she wasn’t looking, she hated to see us climb thing. Good thing my dad thought about the multiple uses for these things. He used a lot of cement to make sure it stayed put!

I was also the victim of monkey bars. During the winter when I was 7ish I was playing in the abandoned (after school) school yard wearing wool gloves. I started going across and had no grip and fell flat on my back.

@mrentropy…wool gloves? Duh!

Oh the things we did when Mom wasn’t looking. When my son was 14 he built a tree club house. It was more like just a platform about 30 feet above the ground. Someone got the idea to put the third seat of a mini-van on the platform. (We’d lost the mini van in Oklahoma a few years before but still had the seat….) My little three year old grandson wanted to play in the club house. I said “OK, but ONLY if he gets buckled into the seat once he gets up there!” It still had the seat belts on it you see. So they obeyed and listened….I wonder how many times my grandson slipped out of his seat belt when I wasn’t looking! And…you know…maybe it was MY idea to put that van seat in the club house! : )

@aprilsimnel Oh, Jesus….did he get out of your life after that?

i was walking and looking down, when i looked up i saw a very HOT attractive man (Jesse Ibarra)

I’ve never had the breath knocked out of me. I didn’t think it was something that happened a lot.. just associated it with books and movies and stuff.

I did fall off the monkey bars when I was 3, but I landed on my chin, split it open, and had to get stitches. Totally different thread.

I was nine years old, on Splash Mountain at Disney World. I came up off the seat when the log went down the drop and when it hit the bottom I was slammed back against the seat. I saw stars and couldn’t catch my breath for long enough that my mother started to freak out about it. I lived, though! Obviously.

As a kid one winter we got a freeze and it made an icy crust. My sled turned sideways and highsided causing me to smash my guts into the edge of the sled. I though I was never going to get any more air. Good times…...gasp….good times.

Get ready:
I was in a soccer league for a long time and between the age of 8–10 and that is when ‘it’ happened to me. I was playing as a defender and an opposing teammate came up at me with the ball. I jump in front of him and being the really smart little kids we were he immediately kicked the ball with all his might. It bounced off my ankles and right back to his foot. Being unsure of what to do he did it again. This time the ball collided with “mine”, it hurt for a while afterward, then to my dismay the ball rolled back before him again. I was praying to god that he would have the brains to pass it to someone else but alas. He booted it again one last time and it knocked the bejebus out of my lungs. Needless to say I developed a freak ‘soccer-ball-phobia’ after that fateful game.

That I remember, I was about 6yrs old and accidentally rode my tricycle too close to the edge of a wash bridge. Over I went, the wash was dry of water and I landed on my back. I remember looking up and around but unable to make any sounds for what seemed a long ass time. If any of you recall the scene in “E.T.” where the alien is lying in the wash, that was me but no moisture. Ergh.

@Dutchess_III – Yeah, I was taken out of that household about 6 months later.

@aprilsimnel I’m just sorry it took 6 months.

I was eight or nine and I fell off of a 12 foot fence. Getting the wind knocked out of you is one of the worst feelings.

I was 11 when a neighbors evil pony ran me over. lol
I was riding him when all of a sudden he started bucking and going nuts.
I fell and swung underneath his neck and was hanging on for dear life as he galloped along.
I finally sort of let go, fell, and he ran right over me stepping on my chest, hip and lower leg.

Not a happy memory. lol

It was going down a steep, snowy hill in one of those over-sized, black inner tubes. The snow was packed down and icy in places. A large bump on the path put the tube airborne, and when it landed, I came back to earth a second or two after it. I must have been 11 or 12 and just remember being scared silly at not being able to catch my breath or talk when friends started calling from the top of the hill.

I was 13, and water skiing. It was a really great thing that I had a life jacket.

Sparring. Punch to the stomache by a much bigger spar patrner.

I too fell off the monkey bars at school onto my back. I was probably 8 or 9 and I thought I was going to die. Oddly enough, it didn’t stop me from playing on the monkey bars.

I wouldn’t usually share this story, but @aprilsimnel was already brave enough to pave the way.

When I was about three, I had a babysitter who would beat me and who let her son beat on me. She always blamed my injuries on me being a rambunctious young boy who liked to explore. One day the son decided it would be fun to see if a reclining lawn chair could be used like a trampoline. I resisted, and he punched me hard in the solar plexus. That knocked the wind out of me. He then placed me on one end of the chair while I was trying to catch my breath and jumped on the other end. I sprained my arm landing and got the wind knocked out of me yet again.

My God! @SavoirFaire Did you ever tell your parents what really happened? Did this lady and her kid get in trouble?

I was taken out of her care shortly after this, but nothing ever happened to her. The only things that could be proven were the son’s fault. My family did stop buying the “rambunctious young boy” story after this incident, though, and the son wound up in prison for entirely unrelated reasons many years later (violent crime).

I don’t know why it’s still hard to talk about this.

@SavoirFaire – I do. It’s often difficult to tell people what happened. Sometimes when I tell, even today, I feel as vulnerable as when I was little, and I know intellectually that nothing “bad” will happen for telling. No one likes being reminded that at one time, they were utterly defenceless, though we look at small children and know that they are. You were a defenceless child who was hurt by people who were themselves unwell. I’m sorry that such an awful thing happened to you.

When I had my first asthma attack, I was 5 or 6 at the time…
Thank god it’s gone now….

13 and a guy at school called me a foul name. I went up to him and slapped him across the face, trying to stand up for myself. He quickly landed a punch on me that knocked me down and took my breath away. It took a bit to recover.

@aprilsimnel and @SavoirFaire my heart is absolutely breaking…