Pics, or it didn't happen

Or how I got chop blocked by a fence

Mike Rogers

Dec 30, 2022

Let me set the stage for you. It’s 2014, and you're on vacation with your wife's family.

No, I don’t think you understand. I mean her whole family. Grandparents, aunts & uncles, cousins—the whole shebang.

This vacation is a big deal. My mother-in-law is the oldest of 11, and my wife is the oldest of 39 grandchildren. They’ve been doing this every summer for decades. We all drive up to a resort in the North Woods of Wisconsin and spen1d an entire week together.

12 families, 12 cabins, 1 lake, zero wifi networks, and some terribly uncomfortable beds. I love it.

Seriously. I look forward to it every year. I get to leave the world behind and spend an entire week with some of the best people on the planet, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

By now, you’re probably wondering what that has to do with the hastily scrawled Snapchat message. Or maybe I gave you just enough context clues to figure out that it involves me making a complete fool of myself in front of my in-laws, and you’re itching for the specifics. Either way, let’s dive into another disaster.

On this particular trip, my brother-in-law had organized a series of…contests for the younger cousins. A bunch of silly challenges to keep kids entertained in a world without the internet.

Among those challenges was an obstacle course that involved climbing over some decorative boulders and an old wooden fence. There were other obstacles, of course, but these two are the most important.

After all the kids had finished their run, it was time for the “grown ups" to try. Most of them managed just fine. They could jump over the rocks, and climb over the fence with very little effort. The more athletic participants were able to just vault over the fence. All good, safe fun.

Then it was my turn.

I feel the need to preface this. I was on the track team in middle school. I ran the mile. Slowly. I also learned how to run the hurdles. Again, slowly. I, uh, liked to jump over things. Planters, bushes, small tables. Random crap, just because I could.

This strange habit carried over into high school and college. I distinctly remember just leaping down entire flights of stairs because I couldn’t be bothered to descend like a normal, human person. I was a bit…strange. I mean, I still am, but I was then too.

Back to the main story. The boulders weren't that big. They also weren’t exactly uniform. So, that hurdling technique I picked up on the track team—the thing I wasn’t really that great at to begin with. It did me zero favors.

I cleared the first two rocks with no trouble, and I like to think I impressed a few people with my impeccable form (because I’m clumsy and delusional). By the third one, though, my rhythm was off. I cleared it, but I didn’t have enough space for the next one. So I caught my toe, and decided to just sort of throw my body over it somehow.

I imagine it looked something like bad ragdoll physics from early versions of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

My ego was bruised to say the least, but I recovered. I got back on my feet, put my glasses back on, and set my sights on the fence. My redemption story was about to begin.

There are two important details about the fence that I need you to understand.

First: I’d done this before. Specifically, the previous summer. I decided to test myself and jumped the fence with no issues (and no witnesses).

Second: The fence was about waist high. At 5’8” (roughly), this fence was probably somewhere in the range of 3' tall, which is roughly equivalent to the standard high school hurdle height. On paper, I’ve got this.

I know. I opened with the punchline here. Bear with me. I need to to put yourself in my shoes, and look at this situation from my perspective. It was a sure thing. I’d launch myself over that fence with the majestic grace of a gazelle amid the awed gasps of everyone gathered on the front lawn of the resort lodge. I'm the software engineer, not the athlete. They wouldn’t see it coming. I would be a legend!

I was half right. The artist’s rendition of what transpired next is somewhat inaccurate. Looking at that image, one would assume that I managed to leave the ground—that maybe I caught my foot on a stationary object that wasn’t designed to tip over like a Weeble if my timing was off.

No. I caught the top of the fence less than two inches above my waist, and folded in half like a lawn chair. My upper body (mostly my face) hit the back side of the fence with enough momentum left to pull my legs over, and I crumpled into a heap in the dirt, and just sort of laid there for a few minutes trying to process exactly what happened.

The most surreal part, though, is that aside from that Snapchat screenshot at the top of this post, there is no physical evidence that this even happened.

Seriously. What I did on that July afternoon is the kind of think that would earn an interview with Bob Saget (RIP) and a healthy sum of cash. This was comedy gold with at least 30 witnesses, and no one has it on camera.

This is a shared memory that lives on simply because we collectively refuse to let it die. It permiates every family gathering. “You sure we should let Mike carry that?”

I named my team in the family’s fantasy football league the Hillside Hurdlers in honor of this momentus blunder. This is one of those stories that will last forever. My kids will hear this story from their aunts and uncles, and the only thing I regret is that they'll never be able to see it.