When I was six, I put forks in the microwave because I had heard that it could make lightning and I wanted to see the pretty lights.
It worked, then killed the microwave.
When I was nine, I was sitting on the side of one of those slides with no middles (that you're supposed to straddle and slide down) when I decided to do a flip off it. In my mind, I was going to lean forward, let go and execute a perfect flip in mid air before landing.
What happened, was I failed to let go and simply went in an arc and I hit my head on the underside of the other part of the bottom-less slide. I fell to the ground, dazed and confused- and hopped up and went back to class with a lump the size of an egg on his head.
I was then taken home and looked after by my dad, and when I started vomiting my dad took me to the local GP who checked and checked and checked. Apparently my pupils were dilating and I was beginning to get aggressive and weepy. I vomited twice before feeling woozy- then went to hospital where the concussion had become a haematoma. Giant bright blue egg shaped lump on my head and pain fit to split my head in two. I kept nearly dozing off but I was woken up each time by the doctor, my dad, my mum, my six year old sister and my three year old brother.
It took me a week to fully recover, but I was back up and playing with the best of them.
When I was fifteen, I got in a fight with a bully who was bigger than me by a good 30kg and 30cm.. The bully poured a bottle of soft drink all over my head, so I stole the bottle and clubbed him with it in the temple. He saw red and lifted me up by my throat and dashed my head against a brick wall over and over until I was semi conscious.
One of my friends stood in front of this bully to act as a shield to prevent the semi conscious me from taking any more hits from the enraged bully.
By the time I had recovered enough wits to know what was going on, my vision had almost entirely blacked out with the exception of the centre which was fuzzy and indistinct. I went home after that and couldn't stop yawning. I went to the doctor, who said I should rest (but not sleep just yet) and put an icepack on it. So, I did, and then I spent a week off school. I vomited nearly twenty times, but the concussion was not as serious as when I was nine.
When I was seventeen, I was at a multicultural fair with my family. The fair prided itself on being green- its main power supply was twenty pushbikes connected to a turbine powering the festival (with generators using green fuel and solar panels as a backup). I was on one of the bikes, and my brother was on another. There was a readout saying how much energy we were generating per second on the end of the stall, and my brother said "Reudh, I'm generating more energy than you."
I sped up. "Nah, I'm still generating more."
Sped up again. "Nah, still generating more."
I put the bike in the absolute highest gear, highest range, and pedalled like a man possessed for a full minute.
"Reudh, I'm still generating more than you." He was barely pedalling.
I gave up and hopped off the bike, because we were leaving.
I was fine, but tired. We walked about 100m before I started feeling really queasy. I said "Dad, I feel sick. I think I overdid it on the bikes."
Dad stopped and checked me over (qualified first aid) and sat me down on the ground. My vision turned grey and fuzzy. My hearing began to muffle.
I now know that that's because my blood sugar had suddenly PLUMMETED- hypoglycaemeia brought on by overexertion.
I knew that I was seconds from fainting when my sister proffered a cup in my face- I grabbed it with numb hands and drank it- it was orange juice. The clarity of hearing and vision that returned was shocking.
I managed to hop up- and instead of feeling faint, I just felt very weak for a few hours.
But darn, how competitive I was.