I was about six years old on the date of this unfortunate event. It was the summer of 2008 and it was a very hot day. It had gotten to the point where it was so hot that from a distance you could see the ripples in the air caused by the heat waves. At the time we were visiting my mother’s friends and staying only for a week or two. We were living in a small apartment that we rented above our friends apartment that they owned but only used during the summer. My mother, brother, sister and I lived on the very top floor of the apartment building there were three floors and our friends lived on the second floor. The apartment building wasn’t very large nor was the apartment. The entrance was very small which only had one door that lead into the lobby. The lobby wasn’t like your classical lobby there was only the keys on the wall, a few doors, a very large glass window and an enormous spiral flight of stairs that lead only up to the fourth floor. There was a lot of construction going on at the time to build some more apartment buildings because the location was beautiful and it lacked tourism because of the very few places to rent out. There was a lot of soft red dirt mixed in with regular dirt that covered the majority of the construction site. The construction site was littered with backhoes.

My mom and I went down the stairs to go pick up my friend and his mom so we could go to the beach. We knocked on their door three times and my mom’s friends husband answered he was a very big guy and seemed pretty intimidating. When my friend and his mom came to the door like me he was coated in sunscreen and he and his floaties on.
When we made it out of the building we took a 30 second walk down a street straight to the beach. My mom found a cool spot in the shade where my friend and I sat down and played. As we were playing my mom and her friend entered the cool sparkling water and began to paddle slowly away from the shore and every second getting farther and farther away. We were not allowed to play in the water unattended because I just learned how to swim that year and it had only been a few weeks since I learned how to swim.

My friend´s name was Marco he was very tall but we around the same height at that age. He was only a year older and we had only just met this year. As we were talking I decided that we should go into the water. As we were playing in the water I began notice a very large object below the surface of the water which struck my curiosity. I bent over to grab it because it intrigued me and I wanted to show my friend because it was so large and I had never seen something so big. I got a nice firm grip around the rock and I began to lift so I could get a better look at it and show my friend. I began to lift it up and to my surprise i began to lift it. As the water started to break the surface it began to get heavier to the point where my little arms couldn’t lift anymore. So i took a little break by putting the enormous the rock on my right leg for a quick second. That was one of the worst decisions I have ever made. To my dismay there was a … jellyfish underneath the rock imbedded inside of the rock. I had not yet noticed the jellyfish until it was too late. The jellyfish began to viciously zapping my leg leaving me in agonizing pain taking off a lot of the skin of my leg off. The jellyfish was still zapping me and in an instant I took the rock and threw it as far as I could. I was starting to get really scared because I hadn’t looked at the damage the Jellyfish inflicted until I noticed I was swimming in my own blood. I was wailing in pain like a seal being harpooned for its blubber. The pain was so unbearable every second worst then the last. It was a pain that was nowhere near comparable to anything I have ever felt. I did not know what to do because there was no adult there to help me and I could not walk anywhere. I did every thing that my little six year old mind allowed me to, to stop or dial down the pain the only thing I could think of was splash cool water on to my wound until my mom would come back.

For the rest of the summer it was not very enjoyable. It was not a fun summer because all my injury allowed me to do is lay down with nothing to do but sit and watch tv. Throughout the summer I had to visit the emergency a few times. It will always be a summer that I will never forget and a story that will always stay with me, not only that but the scar that the jellyfish created will stay with me because it has created a permanent scar on my right leg. As bad as the summer was it was definitely a summer I was going to remember.