April 21, 2010

My daughter, Elsa, bumps her head once in a while, but that’s to be expected since she’s 2 years-old and falls down more often than a sloshed business executive. Not too long ago, she suddenly climbed out of her crib in the middle of the night, a maneuver she had never managed before, and conked herself pretty good on the way down. We no longer have a crib. More recently, she accidentally smacked her noggin on a wooden couch frame, and wound up with a generous bruise on her forehead. But we had to keep the couch.

Like most kids, though, Elsa is a resilient little thing. After the initial boo-boo shock and the application of an ice cube, she’s right back on that horse…or on the coffee table, as the case may be. More often than not, she spends her days enduring only the blunt impact of hugs and kisses from her dad, her brother, and her pretty mommy (see photo).

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This all got me thinking - reminiscing probably isn’t the right word for it - about the time in junior high school when I got whomped in the head so hard I was knocked out cold. I actually saw little shooting stars, the way cartoon dogs do when a cat or rooster hits them with a cast-iron skillet. Then everything went black. I woke up with a knot on my forehead the size of a golf ball. It honestly stuck out about an inch or so. It also hurt like a sonofabitch, in case you’re wondering.

I never saw it coming, either. What happened was, I was in P.E. class, playing basketball in our rickety gymnasium (there were dead spots on the wooden floor, and the ball would roll away, rather than bounce, if you happened to dribble on them). It was raining that day, so the football players, who would normally be outside doing exercises, were lined up along the edge of the court, squeezed into the space between the bleachers and the floor.

A great big, likeable farm boy named Jonathan Williams was working out with one of these things when I was passing by...

That’s called foreshadowing.

I, of course, had absolutely no idea Jonathan was stretching this tightly coiled spring with big metal handles on it across his already considerable chest. I was just bringing the ball up-court, looking for somebody to pass it to. However, I was very quickly enlightened to Jonathan's presence when one of the handles slipped from his sweaty palm, shot out like a rocket, and plastered me smack in the middle of my forehead— WHAM!! I remember thinking for a split second that I'd been hit with a baseball bat, then I was out like Michael Jackson on propofol.

When I woke up, somebody drove me to the hospital, and they took X-rays, which revealed only that I would have a killer headache for a while, and that my brain was alarmingly small.

The swelling eventually went down, and I was soon playing basketball again, although I would cry uncontrollably whenever I was expected to dribble the ball the length of the court. From that point on, I could also smell colors, and could write two different sarcastic phrases simultaneously, one with each hand. Other than that, me okay not so bad.

I wish I had a moral for this story, other than you shouldn’t let yourself get beaned by heavy metal projectiles. But you probably knew that already. Then again, maybe it's actually Jonathan's story, and it means you shouldn't work out when it's raining.

Paul Tatara