“One thing they don’t tell you about having a kid,” this lady said as she sat down next to me on the park bench and just to put this whole thing into context, I don’t have kids, I was just sitting there resting after my mile-run, anyway, this lady just started chatting, “is they get hurt. I’m telling you, it’s wound after wound, injury after injury, it honestly makes me wonder whether the kid’s gonna make it to adulthood.”

I acknowledged with a nod and she kept talking, “I wonder why they fall, I mean I know why they fall, they’re clumsy, but you would think that after falling once and getting hurt, they would know not to do it again.”

Her words made me think back to my childhood as I was one of those “clumsy” kids who fell a lot but in my defense, I did have a problem, and wound up getting my knees scraped a lot. “I don’t think they do it on purpose,” I didn’t want to say anything, I don’t usually comment on this kind of things but I must, in this case, for my sake.

She turned to me, as if suddenly acknowledging my existence, and said, “I’m sorry,” she let out an awkward chuckle, “I thought I was talking to myself.”

Written for Six Sentence Story. The prompt is “Wound”.