You Slippin' (Off a Waterfall) by Trevor Barrant

When I was younger, I was in Jamaica, climbing a tourist attraction. It was Dunn's River Falls, a waterfall in Montego Bay. I was climbing the waterfall with my family, and a guided group of about fifteen people. The smell of salt water and palm trees was in the air. The first part of the climb, I thought would be the most challenging, but I was wrong. We went up a gradual incline for around ten minutes, but then we hit a wall. We had to try to scale a wall of smooth rocks about twenty feet high. I was scared, but I made my way up. Realizing that the water was going to make the climb very difficult, I decided to take a back route around and up. Me, being nine, made an ill- informed decision going up by myself. I didn't tell anyone I was leaving, I just went. There was no one to tell me what the dangers of this way up were. As I neared the top, I got excited. I rushed up the rest of the way to rejoin the group. As I was running across the top of the falls, I didn't notice a twenty foot drop off. I kept running, and because of the slippery rocks, I lost my balance and fell of the edge. Even though my fall did not last long, it felt like an eternity. As I was falling, I didn't see my life flash before my eyes, but a voice, yelling,"You idiot!" I ended up falling into a pool of water. I choked on the water, which was saltier than three buckets of McDonalds fries. The voice was just my sister, which I should've known. Many of the people in the group were laughing at me. It turned out that what happened to me, happens all the time. When I got out of the water, I was embarrassed, but no one needed to know that. I went up to my sister, and she said, "You're a real idiot." "You said that already," I told her. She said, "I know, but I thought I should remind you." "Whatever," I mumbled and walked away. I was not going to let her make me look bad. I continued my climb to the top of the waterfall without problems. That fall however, continuously came up during the rest of the climb.