It was December 1999 and my sister and I had realized that, if we opened our bathroom window and pushed out the screen, we could climb atop the soap dispenser, onto the ledge and out to the roof above our front door. It was at least twenty feet up and definitely not safe but gimme a break: I was in middle school. I remember being utterly fascinated with this discovery, like I'd uncovered some awesome secret that was hidden in my house instead of a painfully-obvious architectural detail. I'd go up there from time to time for no other reason than to just know that I'd done it: I went on the roof. In retrospect, it wasn't exactly an amazing accomplishment, but I distinctly remember feeling proud, feeling brave, feeling dangerous (yeah, I know) every time I climbed back down into my bathroom, washing away my red footprints in the tub.
Somewhere down this road of feeling proud, brave and dangerous, I got stupid. Moreover, I got cocky. And like most stupid, cocky preteens, I started lying. I'd decided to declare to the world that I was so awesome that I jumped off that red roof and walked away without a scratch.
Did I mention that I was stupid?
Of course, after you say something so ridiculous and farfetched, no one believes you and you find yourself forced by a group of your own peers to either admit that you didn't tell the truth...or to prove something that didn't happen in the first place. Since I was more proud than brave, I chose the latter and figured, "It's not that high, I'm sure I can do it."
And so, in the first week of December 1999, I opened my bathroom window, slid the screen aside and climbed; one foot on the soap dispenser, another on the ledge and I was suddenly 20 feet up on a red, sloping edge. And this, ladies and gentlemen, was when I understood the saying, "Damned if you do, damned if you don't," because LO AND BEHOLD! A certain small, terrifying someone was knock, knock, knocking on the bathroom door, demanding in suspicious, heavily-accented words to know why a gaggle of girls were holed up in one locked bathroom.
My mother, bless her crazy heart, always has a lovely sense of inopportune timing.
To this day, I don't know if one of the girls slammed the window shut in panic or if I ordered them to do so because there wasn't time to climb back into the bathroom (again, have I mentioned I was stupid?? I mean, really! It would've taken me two seconds to run through the window! Two measly seconds!!). What I do know without a shadow of a doubt was that I had two ways off that roof. On one hand, I could go through the same window that I had crawled through just minutes before, thereby revealing myself to my mother, admitting being naughty and incurring the wrath of a 4'10" Filipino dragon.
...or I could jump off the roof, hopefully land on the ground without a scratch instead of dying and not be revealed as a liar to my friends or a deviant to my mother.
Admonishment within my home vs potentially fatal damage. You'd think it'd be such an easy decision. But, you see, when you're young, stupid and in a panic because your mother is about 3 yards and a bathroom window away from catching you red-footed, you don't always make the best choices. As I write this, I'm very aware that someone might be reading (do you have nothing else better to do today??) and think, "Hey! That's not why you told me you jumped!"
Well, yeah. Didn't we cover this? I was a brave and stupid liar who would've rather told an interesting lie than admit that I was just seriously trying to get away from my mother. After 1 month in a cast with 2 broken toes and 13 years worth of embrassing laughter every time someone brings it up, I always hope this story will just die. But since it hasn't happened in the last decade, I figure might as well give you all a narrative to go with. Here, I'll even start it off for you,
"Once upon a time, there was a really short girl in a bathroom..."
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