Falling Out of a Tree

It was an October afternoon and my brother and I were in the street playing stick ball with some neighbor kids. I was 11 and always eager to do anything. My best friend Nick and I loved climbing trees. We live on a thick wooded street so we had many different trees to choose from to climb. Across the street was one tree in particular that he and I loved to climb. The tree sat in our elderly neighbors front yard so they were never outside to stop us. The air was cool as night approached, while standing in the street with my baseball mitt. We finished up one last game right before it got dark and we all ran over to the tree and started climbing. Me being young, I was also naive, so I felt as if nothing could stop me. I got about 20 feet into the air, and decided it would be a good idea to walk out onto the branch. In doing so, the branch then broke as I got about half way out on the branch. I fell about 15 feet straight down before my left leg caught the last branch on the tree. If I hadn't caught that branch I would probably be paralyzed from the neck down, because I was falling backwards. It was the single scariest moment in my life, and I can only say I'm one lucky kid to have walked away from it with only two cuts on my legs.