Oy, this blog keeps coming back to bite me in the ass. I was at a party a few nights ago and someone said, "I read your brother's comment online and he talked about you knocking yourself out with a garden hose. What's THAT story?" Arg--something I thought was comfortably buried in my nerdish past that I've taken years to erase being thrown back in my face--and at a social setting nonetheless. Now that you've heard about the story, I may as well fill you in on the sordid details.

One day, my mom had charged me with watering the lawn. I was moving the sprinkler from one location to another and was pulling the hose when it got caught up on something. Being the lazy teenager that I was, I decided to try to whip the hose off the hang-up rather than walking back and freeing it. Unfortunately I grabbed the hose not at the end but about 10 inches from the end. Suddenly, as I stood there whipping it up and down and back and forth, something hit me so hard on the head that I couldn't hear out of my right ear, my vision went black for an instant, and I could barely stand up straight. I was standing near the road in front of our house and thought that someone must have thrown a rock at me as they drove past. I stumbled back to the house, all the while telling myself my name, address, phone number, and preferred brand of bacon bits to confirm that I didn't have amnesia. I'd seen enough movies and soap operas to know that even the slightest blow to the head is enough to make someone forget that he's a rich baron that drives racecars and is a double agent between the US and Canada. Unfortunately I could well remember that I wasn't wealthy royalty but a pimply teenager into computers and science--at least the injury could have made me think I was a British agent for a few minutes. When I went in the house and told my mom what had happened. She was (understandably) freaked out and rushed me to the clinic in town. As we were sitting in the examination room, I had some time to think about what had happened and my original thought that someone had thrown a rock at me just didn't seem to add up. One, a rock thrown that distance would have left more than a series of threaded lines on my forehead, and two, I wasn't even facing the road. It was then that I realized that I had hit myself with the wicked strike of a whipped garden hose. I sheepishly told my mom what I had just realized and she said that we'd stick to the thrown rock story when we told the doctor what had happened. And that's exactly what we did. The story was safely lost to history until my brother dragged it back to the open--thanks Jarrod! Now the internets know why I have a slight bump on my forehead and why I'm into whips and chains. Now if nothing exciting happens next week I might tell you about hanging upside-down from the swingset at school with my pants around my ankles.