An Essay on the Reliability of Non-Fiction Writers

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Before I left for college, my dad and I were talking about the worst pains we’d ever felt. My dad’s worst pain was when he tried to do a backflip off a hot-dog shaped water floaty and kneed himself in the face, shattering his left eye socket and displacing his left eyeball by about half an inch. My worst pain was after I fell into a fire pit and got second and third degree burns from my ankle to my knee on my right leg. The burning part didn’t even hurt that bad. My grandma will attest to the fact that I didn’t cry once that day—not when it happened, not on the way to urgent care, and not on the way home. I do remember crying, though, crying and screaming when the doctors debrided my burns a few weeks into the healing process. If you are unfamiliar with debriding, it is a process in which a doctor takes a sandpaper-like iodine swab to your open wound to scrape off all of the dead skin and dried ointments.

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“Yeah, I remember that,” my dad said.

I shook my head. “I thought mom took me. I remember mom being there.”