When I was a four-year-old, I walked into my parents’ bedroom. There’s a large mirror against the battered wall. I feel great. Until I set my eyes on the mirror. The girl in the image. Is it me? Don’t know. Is this my image? This strange girl I have never seen before. It’s hard to tell. She surely isn’t me. Or am I wrong? Let’s stick out my tongue and make funny faces. See what happens. Hey. The girl sticks out her tongue too. That’s weird. OK. Let’s try something else. Let’s see if the girl can do this.

I jump and wave my arms. The girl does the same. Oh, there comes mommy. She’s also in the mirror. Now I realize I’m the girl in the mirror, next to my mother.

This was the first time I noticed the world around me. If I look at my face in the mirror nowadays, I no longer make funny faces like I did so many years ago in the 1970s.

An accident that changed my life drastically happened in 1978 when the school bell rang. I couldn’t wait to go home. Our teacher, Ms. Raven, tried to calm us down before leaving class. No one paid attention to her. We were all eager to get home. I was one of them. The weekend was waiting. It had been a long day at school as we learned about history, geography, and mathematics.

As I headed for the hallway, I glanced at Burt—the smart kid in class. You know, I admired him from a distance. He had wavy brown hair and brown eyes. It’d be nice if we’d become friends. Then he was out of sight.

I ran into the hall toward the exit. The school door was wide open. There I noticed Pete in the doorway. He smiled at me. His grin widened as I came closer to the door.

He slammed the door right before my eyes. I stuck out my hands to catch it in time before it would hit me in the face. SMASH! Glass scattered all around me while some large broken pieces of glass stuck in my wrist—creating a bloody, slippery mess. My blood streamed down my hand, but it didn’t hurt.

I wanted to cry. No sound came over my lips as I stepped back in shock. Two girls stood on the stairway and glanced at me with their jaws dropped. A mother—waiting for her child—came running down toward me. Ms. Raven also entered the scene while I didn’t have a clue what was going on. In the meantime, Ms. Raven wrapped a blue kitchen towel around my bloody wrist. I fainted.

In 2014, I worked on a computer application for a client. Then my right hand—the one I injured so many years ago—trembled. My fingertips were getting numb and felt like ice cubes. I went to see a doctor at the hospital, and even after six months of therapy, I couldn’t hold my hand still.

My programming career was over, and a new writer was born.

Guest blog written by me. The original guest blog can be found here: