Author Information
Skidding
There he was, lying in a bed in the middle of a hospital room, he tried to get up and saw his left leg in cast with a metal device coming out of his leg, and he raised his eyes and saw a group of teenagers staring at him like if he was an animal in a zoo. He couldn’t remember much, he just remembered that he was riding his motorcycle with some of his friends and waking up in that room filled with them. It was all so strange for him, suddenly every guy in there started asking him how he was feeling; he just gave a thumb up to everyone who asked him that. He recognized his father’s voice behind the closed door calling his name, Luis, he came in and asked to talk to him while he sat at the edge of the bed and asked for everyone to leave, everyone left the room and when he heard the sound of the door closing his father immediately asked him what was he thinking, he made an effort to remember and told him he was just riding with some friends, but his father was really mad at him, he knew why his father was like that, he waited until his father was done talking to him to apologize.
His father left the room and his friends came back in, he asked them what had happened to his bike and they revealed to him that it was just slightly beaten.
The next day three of his friends came to the hospital before the others, he knew why they were there, they were the three persons that had witnessed the accident. They saw what happened, because they were the only ones who were riding with him that morning a couple of days ago. While they were having breakfast at the hospital one of them went into the room to talk to Luis, he seemed upset and Luis asked what was wrong, it was like having the same conversation he had with his father the day before, both told him the same thing, that he could have avoided the accident if he wouldn’t be so eager to show off about how good he was with a motorcycle, that if he wouldn’t have tried that jump he wouldn’t be in the hospital with his leg broken. There was a big tournament coming up in November and he knew he wouldn’t be able to play, so when he was reminded of that he angrily told his friend to leave. When he was alone he started thinking about the accident, he then remembered his friend, he had told him to slow down and take it easy because it had been raining the night before, and so the pavement was wet. He recalled the moment his bike skidded just before the jump, and how his bike had landed on him.
Then it came to his mind what his father and best friend had said to him, only to make him realize that it was dumb to try to impress his friends, and that he wouldn’t be able to play in a tournament he had been waiting for all year long.
