Danny the Skateboarder
By [email protected]

Summary: A skateboarding accident changes Danny's life forever.


Gee, I can't wait till I turn sixteen and get my driver's license…………. 
Do you know how much of a pain it is to try to get an older sister to 
take you to the mall for a movie and then pick you up later? Yeah, I 
know that Mom and Dad told her that one of the conditions for her 
getting to use the car was that she had to chauffer the younger kids 
around – but do you think she will? Hardly. Amy is so interested in her 
girl friends, and her appearance, and boys of course, that she totally 
ignores anything else. But anyway, till I get my license in four years, 
I've still got my skateboard.

I first got interested in skateboarding about a year ago when I was in 
sixth grade. My older brother has been doing it for a couple of years 
now and he's taken me with him on several occasions. Now I never 
considered myself to be really athletic or anything and the first 
couple of times that he let me use his skateboard I could only stay up 
for a second or two before I hit the ground. And I do mean "hit" – I 
had a pretty good collection of scrapes and bruises at the beginning. 
But I kept after it and within a couple of weeks I had progressed to 
the point where I hardly ever wiped out – at least not as long as I 
wasn't trying some of the more complicated maneuvers.

It annoyed me that I couldn't get some of the clothing styles that the 
other skateboarders wear – you know, the baggy jeans that sit way low 
on your butt – and chains and stuff like that. But in a family of seven 
kids, there's a lot of hand-me-downs and not many new clothes so I 
usually end up wearing my older brother's used clothes. Now don't get 
me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the clothes – except for the 
styles being a couple of years out of date.

Maybe I should let you know a little more about my family: I'm twelve 
years old and kind of the middle kid. Well, not "kind of", I am the 
middle kid. Amy is seventeen, Kim is fifteen, Mark is thirteen – and 
then there's me. The younger ones are Michelle ("Shel") at eleven, 
Sarah at ten, and Luke at six. I guess after Luke, Mom and Dad figured 
that was enough. It's really not too bad being the middle kid – Like, 
whenever my older brother or sisters beat up on me; I can always beat 
up on my younger sisters – Ha!

Boy, did Mark mess himself up this afternoon. He was over at the high 
school practicing his boardslides on some of the railings and I was 
watching him. Boardslide? That's where you come up to something that 
has a straight edge such as a metal railing, or the corner of a 
concrete wall or something like that. You jump your board up onto the 
thing and just slide along it. So anyway, Mark was sliding down this 
handrail and when he got to the end his board slipped out from under 
him, hit the pavement and was vertical for a split second. The problem 
was that Mark landed straddling the board and it really jammed him in 
the crotch. He gave out a high scream and collapsed on the ground, 
moaning and holding himself. I was pretty scared that he was hurt bad 
but after a couple of minutes he was able to get to his feet and he 
limped home. He was walking VERY carefully for almost a week and he 
told me that his balls were all black and blue.

About two miles from our house there's this really neat skate park run 
by the County Parks Department. It's got a lot of different ramps and 
jumps. And everything is made of concrete so it's really sturdy. The 
only problem is that the County is really strict about the rules for 
using it – you have to register with the Police Department, and sign an 
injury waiver, and they inspect your safety equipment (helmet, elbow 
and knee pads), and they charge you a fee of $3 for the day and put on 
a yellow wrist tag to show that you have paid. While that's kind of a 
hassle, the County skate park is fenced in and they do supervise things 
pretty well so you don't have to get worried about being pushed around 
by any of the older kids.

So Mark and I have been going to the County skate park as often as our 
allowances will let us. My allowance is $5 a week and I can usually 
pick up a couple more bucks doing odd jobs but that still limits me to 
about two visits a week. Now there is another park in a Village about 
five miles away that doesn't cost anything. On the other hand, the 
equipment isn't nearly as nice. And while there's a posted sign that 
says that you are supposed to register with the police, and follow a 
bunch of rules that include wearing safety equipment – nobody follows 
the rules. A lot of the guys that skate there don't wear any safety 
equipment at all just to show how brave they are. So usually Mark and I 
will hit the County skate park once or twice a week, and use the 
Village skate park the rest of the time.

Anyway, one afternoon after school I went to the Village skate park by 
myself – Mark had to mow a couple of lawns that day. I wasn't doing 
anything that great, just practicing my Pop Shove Its. A Pop Shove It 
is where you come up to a low obstacle, like a board or sidewalk curb 
and you jump your board over it. It's really not a hard maneuver but 
you have to get your feet on the board just right if you want to get 
any altitude. It was pretty hot that day and the inside of my safety 
helmet was getting very hot and sweaty so I took it off. I guess that 
wasn't too smart as a little later when I was approaching the curb with 
my board and getting ready to jump over it, I saw some movement on my 
right hand side and a second later one of the bigger kids smashed into 
me. I remember getting knocked off my board and getting flipped up in 
the air. The last thing I remember is seeing the concrete curb rushing 
toward my head.

Things were pretty confused after that. I don't really have any 
memories of what happened after the accident. I remember having, like, 
dreams where someone was talking to me – but it wasn't like a real 
dream – more like I was off by myself somewhere and what was happening 
around me wasn't real. As time went on, the dreams began to happen more 
and more often and they began to seem more real. Every so often I'd 
hear a word or two that made some sense to me – like my name. I 
remember one time I opened my eyes a little and things were pretty 
blurry but it looked like I might be in a bed. Just opening my eyes 
tired me out and I closed them and drifted back into my dream world.

Eventually I got to where I could open my eyes and look around. I 
couldn't move my head but I could move my eyes a little and it looked 
like I was in a hospital room. There were a couple of people in the 
room and they looked familiar but I couldn't remember their names. 
Someone in the room was making this really annoying groaning sound and 
after awhile I realized that it was me before I drifted off to sleep 
again.

Some time later, I don't know how long, I could stay awake for longer 
periods of time. I recognized the people that came and went by my 
bedside were my parents, and some other people who might have been 
doctors and nurses. The people were talking to me – at least they were 
moving their mouths and I could hear sound. But most of the sounds 
didn't make any sense. Occasionally I could pick out a word like 
"Danny", or "love" or "injury" – but I couldn't understand enough of 
the words to try to figure out what the people were saying.

Slowly, I began to understand more and more of the words and began to 
make sense of what the people were saying. They were telling me that I 
had received a serious head injury at the Village skate park and at one 
point they weren't even sure that I was going to live. I had been in a 
coma for over three months and was only slowly regaining consciousness. 
They kept telling me to do things – like talk to them, and I could 
think of what I wanted to say but somehow I couldn't get the words out. 
I could make a groaning noise but that was all. I could feel my body 
but I had trouble controlling it. Like when they told me to raise my 
arm I could get it to move up off the bed but I couldn't bend my wrist 
or move my fingers. After what seemed like weeks of this, the doctors 
told me that the head injury had not affected my intelligence but it 
had damaged the areas of my brain and the nerves that my mind used to 
control my body. They said I was only slowly recovering the use of my 
body but that I didn't need to be hospitalized any more and could be 
moved to a rehab facility. I wasn't sure what a rehab facility was but 
I was getting REALLY tired of the hospital.

I guess the only good thing about this is that I don't look bad. The 
first time I looked at myself in the mirror I was afraid that I'd look 
like Frankenstein or something but all I saw was a faint scar on my 
right temple. When I smiled at my reflection in the mirror, it looked 
like I didn't have any teeth. I managed to get out the word "teeth?" 
and the nurse explained that I had received several head injuries in 
the fall and that one of them was some severe damage to my jawbone. 
Many of my teeth had been knocked out and the remainder were so damaged 
that they slowly loosened and fell out while I was in the coma. She 
thought that I could probably get some dental implants while in rehab. 
Whatever. Oh, and I did look kind of pale and white but wouldn't you if 
you had been in a hospital for over four months?

So, two days later, they put me in a wheelchair and took me down to the 
medical transport van that would take me to the rehab facility. I 
couldn't support myself in the wheelchair so they had to put a strap 
around my chest. But I was so glad to get out of the hospital that I 
wouldn't have cared if they had wrapped me in duct tape!

Well, the rehab facility isn't a hospital, but it isn't all that great, 
either. There are a bunch of folks there who are in really bad shape, 
some that just need a couple of weeks of therapy, and some in between - 
I hope that I'm in the in between group. I'm in a semi-private room 
with a kid named Jeff who's about four years older than I am. Jeff was 
in a motorcycle accident and from what he's told me I guess his spinal 
cord was severed in a location that gives him a little control of his 
arms but nothing below that. He can't move his legs at all and has to 
wear a diaper all the time. He has enough use of his arms and hands 
that he can feed himself if he uses special utensils that attach to his 
hands. But his mind is OK and his speech unaffected. I think that what 
the rehab facility is trying to do is show him how to make the maximum 
use of what control he retains over his arms.

By comparison, I can do nothing for myself. I have to be fed, bathed 
and diapered. I can hear okay but have very little speech. I was trying 
to talk to Jeff the other day and all I could get out was a couple of 
garbled words – I was drooling a lot during the process. But I've got 
one hour of physical therapy (PT) in the morning, another in the 
afternoon, and then on weekdays another hour after dinner. I think I'm 
regaining some muscle control as after the first week I could hold my 
head upright and turn it to look in different directions.

Oh, it was funny this morning. A health care aide came in to get Jeff 
cleaned up and he had a pretty messy diaper which she wasn't too keen 
on taking care of. But she got the diaper off and started to clean Jeff 
up and all of a sudden he started peeing. Now he doesn't have any 
control over his bladder so it wasn't his fault but the stream of urine 
hit the aide right in the chest and got her blouse all wet and she was 
mad! She muttered something under her breath and stormed out of the 
room, leaving Jeff there on his bed. He looked at me and I looked at 
him and we both started laughing – well, Jeff laughed, I just sort of 
gurgled.

Speaking of diapers, I'm wearing one too – as you might have guessed 
from my comments about not being able to take care of myself. At least 
they removed the catheter that I had while in the hospital so I don't 
have this tube up my dick any more. I know when I have to pee or have a 
bowel movement, I can feel the pressure building up in my bladder or 
bowels, but I can't do anything to hold things in. So when the pressure 
builds up enough, stuff just starts to come out. The aides will usually 
change my diaper twice a day - in the morning just before I go down to 
PT, and in the evening before I go to bed. That means that I'll usually 
have a very dirty diaper by the time I'm changed. At first I was really 
embarrassed that I couldn't control myself but I realized that it's not 
my fault. And initially it was very uncomfortable to be lying in bed, 
wearing a diaper that I just peed into or had a bowel movement in but 
after a couple of weeks I got used to the feeling of having a dirty 
diaper and just ignored what was happening between my legs.

Well, I can't ignore it completely. Like, I do have to get my diaper 
changed twice a day. And the health care aides that do that sort of 
thing at the rehab facility are usually young girls – most of them in 
their late teens. So I was really embarrassed about having these young 
women open up my diaper to expose the mess that I had made. And then I 
had to feel their touch as they cleaned me off, washed and dried me, 
and applied lotion and powder to me before putting on a fresh diaper. 
At least after a month of therapy, I got to the point where I could 
roll over when they moved from my front to my back so at least I felt 
that I had some control over the process. But it was still strange to 
feel a young woman's hands touching me down there. I guess they were 
used to doing this sort of thing and it didn't bother them – even the 
times when they were rubbing the lotion on me and my dick got all hard 
and big, they just acted like nothing had happened. I could imagine 
them thinking: "Oh Christ, another boner!"

I've got a pretty full schedule as they have added speech therapy 
sessions once a day. They were also trying to have me relearn control 
of my bowels. After every meal, they would put me on a toilet and 
encourage me to, well, to "let go" only when I wanted to. But after a 
couple of weeks of this they realized that I wasn't gaining any control 
over my bowels and gave up that training.

I have gotten to the point where I can feed myself – sort of. I can now 
move my arms pretty well, and I can flex my wrists a little so I can 
pick up objects by holding them between my hands, but I can't bend my 
fingers so the kind of strap-on utensils that Jeff uses won't work. 
What they finally ended up doing was switching me from solid food to a 
liquid diet. Well, maybe "solid food" was the wrong thing to say. It 
looks like the damage to my jaw was severe enough that I can't be 
fitted with dental implants – at least not for a number of years. So 
all my food had to be chopped up really well or pureed before I could 
eat it – it was really like baby food so the change from "solid" to 
"liquid" isn't all that big a deal. Anyway, they put the liquid meal in 
a bottle with a nipple-like thing on the end, and I can grip the bottle 
between my hands, bring it up to my mouth, and suck the liquid from it. 
It's not a great solution but it works. The only bad thing is that when 
I was eating the "solid" food I got a variety of things to eat but now 
every meal is this sweet tasting "formula." Oh well, at least I can 
feed myself now.

Speech therapy has helped me a lot. If I concentrate and work hard on 
it I can say just about any word that I want. But I can't say the words 
very fast and sometimes there's almost a minute pause between words. So 
I try to keep my sentences very short and to the point. Like if I've 
just filled my diaper and I want to be changed, I can just say " . . . 
. … wet . . . . . " or " . . . . . poopie . . . . . " to the aide.

And the physical therapy has gotten me to the point where I can move 
around now. I can't stand up by myself, but if an aide helps me to get 
out of bed and brings a walker over to me, I can shuffle slowly down 
the hall with the walker. But it had taken me almost four months to 
improve this much and I was getting pretty depressed. Here I was, a 
twelve year old boy, and I had about the physical and vocal skills of a 
one or two year old. There were times when I'd lie in bed at night and 
cry – wondering what would become of me. But then I got some good news 
that cheered me up.

With all the improvements that I had made, the therapists feel that I 
can go home and continue my therapy on an out-patient basis so next 
week I'm scheduled to be discharged – AND AM I LOOKING FORWARD TO GOING 
HOME? YES!

Because of my problems, the school district decided that having me 
return to school was not appropriate at this time. What they did was 
work out a plan of individual instruction and tutors come to visit me 
once a day at the rehab facility. And when I go home they will continue 
to visit me there – except on vacations and holidays, of course. Ha! 
Ha!

I hadn't realized how much my accident was costing. Turns out that 
since I wasn't wearing my protective helmet that we don't have much of 
a case against the Village. And while Dad's health insurance covers 
most of the bills, the remaining amount that they have to pay still 
adds up so Mom had to get a part-time job to make a little extra money. 
And since we couldn't afford home health care aides, most of my care 
will have to be provided by my family. Now you might expect Amy as the 
eldest to help out but she is so totally self-absorbed, she can't do 
anything except for those things that will benefit her. And since Mom 
is out of the house a good part of the day, a lot of my care falls to 
Kim, my fifteen-year-old sister.

Now Kim and I were always good friends but this is a big load for her. 
While Mom can get me out of bed in the morning, take my dirty diaper 
off and give me a bath, Kim than has to put a clean diaper back on me 
and give me my breakfast bottle. She'll leave me another bottle I can 
have for lunch and when she gets home from school in the mid-afternoon 
she'll have to change me again. Later in the evening, my Mom or Dad can 
still help out but I really appreciate all the effort Kim is putting 
into taking care of me.

The first time that Kim changed my diaper it felt really weird to me. 
Well, I don't mean that the physical sensation of having my diaper 
changed felt weird – I'd pretty much gotten used to having my 
"privates" touched at the hospital and then the rehab facility. But the 
idea of my older sister touching my private parts, and seeing and 
smelling the mess I had made in my diaper was something else. But Kim 
acted like it was no big deal – even when she was putting lotion on my 
dick the other day and I got this huge erection.

I fell out of bed last night. That was really scary because one minute 
you're asleep and the next minute you're awake – and falling – but it's 
dark so you don't really know where you are – there's just the terror 
of falling. I hit the floor with a big thump and tried to call for Mom 
or Dad or Kim but all I could get out was a loud wail. Mom and Dad 
heard me and came running to my room and got me quieted down and back 
into bed. Now I never had this problem at the hospital or rehab 
facility but that was because there I was in a hospital bed that had 
these pull up bars on the sides to keep you from falling out. But my 
bed at home didn't have anything and it was too easy for me to roll a 
little in my sleep and then actually fall out of bed. When Mom and Dad 
put me back in bed last night they tried putting some pillows on either 
side of me to try to keep me away from the edges of the bed.

I'll have visitors at the house – like, relatives and a few of my 
friends from school - and the way they act around me annoys me. Like, 
my mind is perfectly OK. I can still think and understand things the 
way I did before the accident. But it seems that because my physical 
and verbal skills are at the one or two-year-old level, they must think 
I'm thinking like a baby. They'll talk to me in a really high voice – 
like you do to a baby. And they'll smile a lot and use really simple 
words and sentence structure. Really pisses me off at times!

I mean, even Kim has started to do it. She'll say something like: 
"Kimmy will fix", when I need something done for me. When she changed 
my diaper this afternoon she said: "Danny really went poopie and pee-
pee in his diaper, didn't he?" "Yeah, I'll poopie and pee-pee you, 
Kimmie", I thought.

Fell out of bed twice more last week – even with the pillows – and I 
knew that Mom and Dad were concerned that I'd really hurt myself one of 
these days. As it is, I had a pretty good bruise on my face from the 
last fall. So when Kim took me up to bed tonight and I saw that my bed 
had been replaced with a crib I wasn't too surprised. I wasn't too wild 
about that as it meant that I couldn't get out by myself – but I guess 
that it's better than continuing to fall and hurt myself.

Anyway, the way I was being treated and my slow progress in improving 
my physical and vocal skills got me down. It got to the point where I'd 
cry a lot at night. And some days I just didn't want to get out of my 
crib or do anything. Mom asked me what was wrong and I replied: " . . . 
. . Danny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sad." Mom talked it over with 
one of my doctors and he told her that it sounded like a case of 
clinical depression which is fairly common in cases such as mine. He 
ended up prescribing an anti-depressant for me.

The funny thing was that after I started taking the anti-depressant I 
really did begin to feel better. Oh, I don't mean that I was suddenly 
running a four minute mile or anything – I still had all my problems – 
but somehow they didn't bother me as much.

My hair is a kind of dirty blonde color and while it was kind of shaggy 
before my accident, since I haven't had a haircut since that day about 
eight months ago, my hair now hangs down to below my shoulders. Kim was 
giving me a bath last week and she said: "You just sit there for a few 
minutes, Danny. I'm going to fix you up." And with that she got a pair 
of scissors and trimmed my hair so that it didn't look so shaggy. It 
was still long but at least the ends were even. Then she gave me a 
shampoo. I didn't like that part because she got some of the shampoo in 
my eyes and it stung so I cried. But she washed the soap out of my 
eyes, got me out of the tub and dried me off. She combed out my hair 
and told me how much better I looked now that my hair had been trimmed. 
Then she did something that really annoyed me – she put a ribbon in my 
hair. "Aw come on Kim", I thought, "this is bullshit." Unfortunately I 
couldn't stop her and since then when she gets me up for the day she'll 
usually put a ribbon or two in my hair.

While I could get around the house, at least one floor of it, with a 
walker, I really hated to use the thing. Someone had to bring it over 
to me. And then they had to help me stand up and grab its handles. And 
then I could only move with a very slow and shuffling gait. So finally 
I just quit using the walker. I found that it was much faster to simply 
crawl around. During the day Kim leaves the side down on my crib and I 
found that I could kind of slide out of my crib and down onto the 
floor. And then I could roll over on my tummy by myself, and I have 
enough strength and control over my arms and legs now that I can crawl 
around pretty well – I'll never do a four minute mile but at least I 
can move on my own without assistance.

I found some TV shows that I like pretty well and I'll spend a lot of 
time just sitting in the living room – on the floor usually – and 
watching TV. It's not that I'm really hungry or anything but it feels, 
well, just sort of comforting, to be sucking on a bottle. So every 
couple of hours or so, I'll call out: " . . . . . bottle . . . . . ", 
and soon someone will bring me one. With all the extra liquid that I've 
been drinking, my diapers were getting pretty wet and if Kim didn't 
watch me carefully, my diaper might begin to leak a little. Kim tried 
putting a second diaper on me – double diapering but the added bulk 
made it impossible for my to crawl around – I could roll from side to 
side but not crawl. So I guess they decided that I needed a bigger 
diaper size.

Well, there was one other thing that had happened. With the lack of 
physical activity and all the liquid formula that I had been drinking, 
I've put on a fair amount of weight. My body has lost its trim 
"skateboarder shape" and I now look decidedly "chubby." Plus my tummy 
has gotten much larger and now bulges out and sags down over my diaper 
in the front. My tummy kind of pushes the diaper top down and that 
makes it more liable to leak. So Mom got some diapers in a Super Plus 
size or something like that that are thicker and more absorbent and 
they'll also cover up my big belly and come up to the bottom of my 
chest. The first time that Kim put one on me there was so much more 
material between my legs that I had trouble crawling, but I found that 
if I spread my legs to the side that I could still move around.

Because of the large diaper and my big tummy, none of my old clothes 
fit me and so Mom and Kim haven't been getting me dressed anymore. 
They'll just put a diaper on me and I'll crawl around the house in 
that.

"Baby tits, Danny has baby tits", Kim said the other night when she was 
getting me ready for bed. She held up a mirror and I could see that in 
addition to my big belly, I had gained weight in my upper chest area. 
The fat accumulation in my breasts had made them larger and they stuck 
out several inches and sagged down on my chest a little. Kim took her 
finger and traced around my nipples and tweaked them with her thumb. 
That felt pretty good and I smiled.

Yesterday was Sunday and after I'd had my noon bottle, I was just lying 
on my blanket on the living room floor and taking a nap. One of my 
aunts was visiting the house and she came over and sat down beside me. 
She started ticking me and soon I was giggling and drooling. "That was 
fun", I thought. My birthday is coming up in a couple of days and my 
aunt had brought me a present. Mom wasn't going to open it till my 
birthday but I fussed until she did. My aunt had given me some 
bodysuits – six of them to be exact! Now for those of you who don't 
know what a bodysuit is, it's a kind of shirt/pants combination that 
diapered babies wear. On the top it's like a T-shirt but it is longer 
and has a flap at the bottom of the back that comes up between your 
legs and snaps to the bottom of the shirt in front. Mom wanted to try 
one of the bodysuits on me so she could see how they fit so she picked 
a yellow one and had me hold my arms up in the air while she pulled the 
top down over them. Then she smoothed the shirt part down over my body 
and diaper, pulled the flap forward between my legs and snapped it into 
place. It actually did not feel all that bad on me although it is tight 
enough that you can clearly see the shape of my "baby tits" and big 
tummy and diaper through it.

Kim's been treating me more and more like a baby lately. She keeps 
doing "goo-goo" talk instead of talking to me intelligently. And she 
keeps encouraging me to play with building blocks and toy animals and 
stuff like that. When she puts me to bed at night or puts me down for a 
nap she's started giving me a teddy bear to snuggle up to. She gave me 
a pacifier several days ago and insisted that I use it whenever I'm not 
nursing on my bottle. I didn't like it at first but I got used to it 
and now like it. The pacifier isn't as good as my bottle but it is 
still comforting. Kim playfully took it away from me this morning and I 
cried till she put it back in my mouth. I wish she wouldn't tease me 
that way.

I had my birthday party today – I'm now officially thirteen years old! 
I got a lot of presents – mostly clothes. There were several sunsuits, 
and some pairs of shorts with straps to go over my shoulders to hold 
them up, and two pairs of sleepers. Most of them had pictures of 
rabbits and baby goats and stuff on them, but at least they keep me 
warm. My big present from Mom and Dad was a highchair. At first I 
didn't like the idea but after they put me in it the first time I found 
that it made it much easier for me to sit up and work with whatever is 
on the tray in front of me. When I thought that the party was over, 
they surprised me with a cake. Guess they wanted to make it easy for me 
to blow out the candles as there were only two on the cake – but I blew 
both of them out on the first try. I guess I told you that I've been 
eating very little solid food but they gave me a big piece of my cake 
to eat. I eventually got about half of it in my mouth but the rest got 
smeared all over my face and the tray on my highchair. Mom and Dad were 
watching me eat my cake and laughing about how "cute" I was. Dad even 
got out the video camera to record the occasion.

I've been thinking about my situation. The physical and speech therapy 
I had been having haven't really been helping me much lately and the 
doctor recommended that they be stopped. While I had made some progress 
it kind of looks as though I've reached a plateau at about the level of 
a two-year-old from the standpoint of my speech and physical abilities. 
The other thing is that I'm being treated as if I were really that age. 
No one ever has a serious conversation with me – well, they'll play 
with me and talk baby talk to me but that's all. Months ago this would 
have gotten me really upset. But now? Well, I don't really have any 
worries or responsibilities. Mom and Kim are taking care of all my 
needs. And you've got to admit that just lying around the house, 
watching TV, taking naps and nursing on my bottle really is a pretty 
comfortable existence. So these days I'm sort of just "going with the 
flow." If my folks want to treat me like a baby, that's OK with me.