One summer Saturday afternoon when I was eleven, and we
were living on Yokota AFB, Japan, my parents figured I was responsible enough to
watch my two younger brothers by myself.
Marc was nine, and David had just turned seven. Mom and Dad went to the bowling alley for
some kind of church social.
As I have mentioned previously, the three of us used to
wrestle for fun on Sunday afternoons.
After that fad had subsided, we moved on to pillow fighting. And here there were no holds barred. Any pillow, any stuffed animal was fair
game. The only rule was that you couldn't
stuff anything hard inside the pillowcase during the fight. (We all know why rules have to be
made.) The fight ended when the other
two surrendered. We usually never got
that far but had to stop when Mom discovered what we were doing.
But back to this particular a Saturday afternoon with no
parental supervision. I, as the eldest
and biggest and strongest (I didn't even exercise), was beating the living crap
out of Marc and David. I stood atop Marc’s
Superman bedspread in the far corner of the room as he and David attacked one at
a time. As soon as I would bludgeon one,
the other would attack. I would pummel
him, and the process would repeat. To
this day I still wonder that they never attacked me together. For about half an hour the cycle would
repeat. Smash. Stagger. Smash. Stagger.
Whether I had administered the world’s first pillow
concussion, or whether he finally got smart, I don’t know (and neither does he;
I asked him the other day as we were reminiscing the scene), but as I would up
for another plush kill shot, Marc ducked.
Definitely thrown off balance by his modified game plan,
I slipped off the bed, my momentum spinning me three times in the air in one of
those slower-than-life-speech-blurring- scenes where you are aware of what is
about to happen but can’t do anything about it.
I crashed my head hard on the corner of a metal wall heater then collapsed
to the floor.
Dazed for a few seconds, I shook it off and hauled myself
to my feet. My head didn't hurt too much,
just a good knock to the noggin—not even concussion-consideration-worthy. Then I
noticed the large indentation my head had created in the metal. Wow! I wondered how long it would be before
anyone else (with authority) noticed.
And then David started shrieking like a little girl. “You’re bleeding. You’re gonna die!”
I reached back to feel the point of impact, and sure
enough, it came back bathed in bright crimson.
I went to the bathroom mirror and noticed that the back
of my neck was now red, as was my T-shirt.
It was dripping pretty quickly. For
some reason, I did not panic. I got a
spare towel (made sure it was an old one, Mom) and stuck it to my head,
applying pressure because that’s what scouts who have their First Aid merit
badge do. See, kids. Paying attention at Scout meetings pays off.
I sent Marc to fetch our neighbor Mrs. Brown, who knew
how to contact Mom and Dad. They
returned swiftly, and the next thing I knew I was in the ER getting one stitch
in my head. Not too shabby. Mom thought I would need to be numbed, but
the doc said it would be easier to stitch it up right away. And so I discovered that I have a high
tolerance for sharp things in my head.
It didn't hurt a bit.
What did hurt was when I returned to have the stitch
removed by the flight surgeon (or whoever was on call). He cut the stitch, but then pulled the wrong
end. So the ginormous non-boy scout knot
went first back through my scalp and into my head, and then came back out the
other hole, which promptly bled into my hair for a minute or two. Ouch!
And within a day or two my brothers and I were back at it
again.
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