Murderous Boat

By Ari Hensley

Boats are not normally used in the winter; that’s just a plain fact. That begs the question of where you store them when you are done using them for the summer? Well, in a very snowy April 2013, my grandparents thought that it would be a wonderful idea to store their boats/various other machinery at the bottom of the bluff behind their house. 

Rhonda Johnson, mortgage specialist for the bank Alaska USA at the time (she was/is still currently on shopping carts in Safeway) is my paternal grandmother and was there on the scene of me busting my face violently on one of her boats, and she was flabbergasted once I was brought inside of their home. She and her husband, Roger Johnson, had seemingly forgotten about the many boats, unused/broken motorhomes, and other scraps of  machinery when they let their three favorite grandchildren don their coats and winter gear to go sledding on their property. 

The neglect of knowing that children are normally not the smartest creatures concerning thinking about their actions and how they will affect things makes her at least partially responsible for what happened that dark, dark, April evening. But if we were to blame anyone for what happened, I would bestow that honor to my grandfather out of spite. This is because he said that I would “be fine” when I had a black eye and blood running down my face.

Children, as we know, aren’t able to take care of themselves for the most part (and they shouldn’t ever have to) and often are forced to “go with the flow” when they are overwhelmed or just don’t understand what’s happening. I was not excluded from this and often had to bite my tongue or got punished for accidentally speaking too loud (blame goes to the nurospiceness). We, as children, are forced to do things that we don’t want to and sometimes those things go past our boundaries; for example, hugging someone we don’t want to. As gentle parenting shows, having boundaries are important and respecting those boundaries provide more well responded adults who do not hide their emotions because of trauma. Children are like sponges and what we do and teach them affects them for the rest of their lives. If you punish a child for something that you haven’t communicated with is wrong, or if you punish them without reasoning, you’re giving them issues in the future. Too few people think that they can boss around and hurt their children whenever because it “teaches them discipline” when, instead, it worsens your relationship and teaches them to be scared and hide things from you when they do go wrong. Their entire world is adults taking care of them and teaching them stability and structure is important. 

The Injury:

My siblings Vincent and Colhin (eight and five respectively) and I went to our grandparents’s house along with our parents–Maureen and Christopher Hensley–in late April to have a family dinner with some of our uncles, aunts, and older cousins. We had sled many times down the bluff in their backyard whilst waiting for dinner to be done. I had gone under one of the boats several times by the time we were called back inside and thanks to my prefrontal cortex–the decision making part of the brain–being underdeveloped because I was seven, I didn’t realize that going down the same hill and consistently going under or near hitting a boat every time would most definitely lead with me getting hurt eventually. Unfortunately, there was no adult watching us as many of my female family members were inside of the house helping make dinner, and many of the men were being useless. Due to this, I had no one to tell me that going under a boat several times isn’t exactly a good idea (which was needed because I had no common sense at seven). A nick in the arm was somehow the only injury I sustained before we were called inside for dinner. 

After we had gone inside to eat the dinner our grandmother and aunts made, and successfully warmed our tiny bodies to prevent hypothermia, we begged for our Uncle Tommy to take us to our dad’s old decrepit treehouse in the woods. That was when little me thought it would be a brilliant idea to sled down the hill again. The next thing I knew, I was sobbing in the snow under a boat until my uncle pulled me out from under and had the audacity to ask if I still wanted to go see the tree house (best babysitter ever, he should have gotten a reward). We went back up to the house, and that was when I was taken off to the hospital by my mother, who did not listen to my grandfather’s advice to just let me sleep it off when I had a black eye and blood running down my face (not to mention the tears). So I was hoisted off again, in a car while my face felt like it was fully broken. 

Flash forward twenty minutes of speedy driving from Kalifornsky Beach to the Soldotna Hospital, our little protagonist (me) was brought to the ER. My mother continued to say that after both of us got registered at the ER, we waited a little while (like, twenty minutes) before we were taken to a room, a full 40 minutes after the accident. I was hooked up to a few different machines and the nurses had to come check on me every 10 minutes or so, which is standard procedure for my concussion that didn’t seem to be dangerous after evaluation from the staff at the hospital. I was in a very angry and overstimulated state of mind (partly because it was getting close to my bedtime, partly because I was in pain and wanted it to go away). I was irritated with the nurses for doing their job, and wanted to go to bed rather than be in the loud hospital. I was angry with all of the questions the nurses were asking me. Things such as “Who’s your teacher”, “What’s your favorite color”, and “What’s your mom’s name” were being constantly asked every ten minutes or so. In hindsight, because I am not an irritable child anymore, I understand that when someone–especially a child–has a concussion, you have to check on them and make sure that they do not fall asleep or hurt their brain anymore than it already was. As a child I did not understand this and just wanted to go to bed rather than be asked questions over and over and over again. Both my mother and the nurses thought that it was funny when I eventually snapped at them (“My teacher is Mrs. Ralston, I am in first grade and am seven. My favorite color is red. My mom’s name is Moe, now can I go to bed”) and it remains one of her favorite stories she likes to tell to embarrass me.

I was ultimately fine with a concussion, black eye, and permanent fracture in my face. I was eventually allowed to go home, and slept soundly. 

Tonsils:

During that same visit to the ER, it was found and confirmed that I had inflamed tonsils the size of chicken nuggets. The doctors scheduled surgery and I was taken under a week later. I, of course, was unaware of almost everything that was going to happen and had happened until years later when I was asking my mom.

According to my mother, at this time I also had excess tissue in my nose and talked like one nostril was plugged all of the time. She said that the doctor we were talking to–who was explaining what would happen during the procedure in ways that I could not possibly understand–was, apparently, the one to help birth me at the hospital when I was first born and was making fun of how my voice sounded because of the extra tissue in my nose. I yelled at him to shut up and tried to storm out of the room, which he found very funny (I have no memory of this). 

 I don’t remember much of what happened during this incident or the surgery following it in general, due to being seven years old (and not being all that smart). The one thing I do remember is being in the hospital gown after drinking the medicine the nurses gave me (“night night juice”) and watching the fairy portion of Sesame Street, which was the only part of Sesame Street that I enjoyed as a child. I remember the exact episode that was playing (it played on the TV in the corner of the room and was barely audible, but both me and my mom were quiet as we waited for me to fall asleep. We had missed the opening of the episode, but didn’t miss too much and got the context that Blogg, a nontraditional fairy muppet, was self-conscious about his wings when they were going to go to a festival with his family and friends of his kind. He hid them under a very itchy yellow sweater before going with his friends from fairy school to the festival. The turning point of the episode was when A guy was stuck in the air after a dragon–or dragon like creature–was upset and throwing a tantrum. Blogg was peer pressured into the air because only a creature like him and his family could calm the dragon; so he was forced into action. Once he got the guy back on the ground, no one was making fun of his wings like he expected and he learned that having things different about yourself doesn’t make you weird); before I fell asleep. Once I woke up, I had no no tonsils, no more excess tissue in my nose, and I had some gifts that my mother bought from the very overpriced gift shop in the hospital. 

After I went home, I was only allowed to eat soft mushy things (like mashed potatoes, soup, and ice cream) with instruction from the doctors, and was held home from school for three weeks. 

The three week time period that I could not go to school caused trouble with my first grade class after I got back to school. First grade is a time where we’re learning how to count by fives, add, and other basic life skills that people use for the rest of their lives (outside of horrible spelling tests and bad teachers). This included learning how to read an analog clock, the kind of clock that is used in every single classroom. That’s right, you heard it here first–I did not learn how to read an analog clock until third grade. This is because my teacher refused to teach me anything about them since I missed the entire unit and no one thought to explain how it worked after I complained that the teacher wasn’t helping me–thank you so much, Mrs. Ralston. This is another example of how children are reliant on adults and when they don’t get what they need (someone teaching me how to read an analog clock in this case) it can have consequences. When children learn that they can’t have people help them–either because the adult refuses or they lash out at the child for not knowing–which can lead them to be missing huge chunks of things or not understanding what to do, which can lead to even more problems.

 I eventually learned it on my own when I figured it out during a very boring lecture in my third grade class, though I hurt my neck trying to read the digital clock at the very front of the class to see how it worked. 

Eventually, through time, almost all of the remnants of an injury in the first place–other than some pictures and posts on my mom’s Facebook page–were completely gone, except for a small dimple on the right side of my face that remains to this day in 2022.