A boy at school injured himself while climbing on a massive jungle gym installed decades earlier. He had thought to stand at the very top: a place so precarious and frightening that hardly anyone dared make the attempt. But the boy regarded it as a worthy effort, even an adventure!
While climbing, he gashed his leg on a broken feature sticking out of the equipment, a deficiency few had discovered and no one else could see looking from the bottom. (None of those who ran the school dared climb the jungle gym themselves.) Writhing in pain and becoming distracted, the boy lost his grip and fell all the way to the bottom.
On his own, he made his way to the school nurse and explained to her what had happened. She insisted, however, that it WASN'T the jungle gym's fault! "You shouldn't have been climbing there! It was YOU who slipped! The jungle gym isn't broken! It's YOU!"
She had never seen such an injury before. Swooning at the sight of so much blood, she foolishly suggested that a tourniquet and amputation were the only acceptable remedies. The boy vehemently protested. He said the gash was deep, but in no wise irreparable. The injury would heal with proper treatment. The boy, not wishing to see others suffer his fate, endeavored to warn them about the broken jungle gym.
But his pleas were ignored by those who could see nothing wrong from where they stood. The fault was the boy's.
The nurse told the principal what the boy had said. The principal expelled the boy for his "misconduct" and banished him from the school grounds (so he couldn't tell others what had happened to him).
The boy received no treatment for his injuries from the school nurse or the school, but was left to heal on his own. The pain and suffering he experienced were intense! He not only suffered his injury, but "lost" nearly ALL of his schoolyard friends! Plus he could no longer play on the playground equipment he so much enjoyed. Not to mention the rigor and discipline of attending school with others.
He was on his own now.
But the jungle gym was still broken.
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