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When I was a kid, the tree in my front yard had a branch that grew straight out horizontally.  It was at just the right height that I could reach it while sitting on a bicycle, so my friends and I would frequently peddle toward it as fast as we could, then grab the branch as we rode underneath it and let our bikes zip out from underneath us.  Part of the trick was to see how far our bikes would go riderless before falling over.

Once when I was 10 years old, I lost my grip on the branch while performing this stunt, and I fell and hit my head on the grassy lawn.  Hard.

The only memory I have of the incident is like a blurry dream:  My foster-sister Jennifer had been mowing the lawn, and I saw her run over and stand over me.  Then I woke up in my bed with a sore bump on my head.

The tree is still there in my parents's yard, but the branch is gone.  I think Dad cut it off the summer that he burned the entire lawn with a propane torch.