The Spear Incident

When I was growing up in Manila, Philippines, I remembered an incident involving one of my cousin. The house we lived in Madison Street was next to my grandfather's warehouse. The old trucks, tires, treehouse, old oil drums and a lot more junk became fodder for our rich imaginations. We turned the oil drums into horses. Our wild west bar was a board between two standing oil drums. The old empty bottles were our whiskey and the flattened bottle caps were our coins. We played cops and robber, cowboys and indians and even Tarzan.

It was while we were playing Tarzan that an accident happened. It started when we crafted spears from the wood poles and metal welding rods. After watching an episode of Tarzan where the hero exchange spear throws with his enemy, we tried it with our spears. We stood a decent distance apart from each other like Tarzan in the TV show. I threw the first spear and missed him by two feet, purposely missing him like in the Tarzan show. My cousin aimed his shot and threw his own spear toward myself. He threw the spear a little harder than he wanted. Instead of it landing in front of me, it found my left leg.

We were both shocked, I guess, I was more shocked because I have a spear imbedded into my leg. The wound was deep, but it was a clean straight wound. I pulled the spear out of the wound and saw blood spurting from the hole it left. My cousin helped me to our house to get it taken cared by my Mom. When my Mom saw us we explained what happened. She clean the wound and put a bandage on it. She asked if we would be repeating that crazy escapade and we answered a big "no, Mom." Thinking back now, I don't really think I cried when the incident happened. I was so shocked because of the spear in my leg and also imagining how mad my parents would be at me. I was just glad I didn't get punished and grounded.