Thursday, January 29, 2009

Head injuries

This weekend, while chatting with my grandmother and aunt, we were discussing a recent spill that my grandmother took that had given her a concussion. (She's okay, by the way... and curiously the incident was a mixed bag in terms of effects. On the one hand, she has to read large-print books for a week to two, which unfortunately limits her to Reader's Digest condensed books or the Scriptures... eh, who am I kidding... it limits her to just Reader's Digest condensed books. But on the other hand, it cleared up something that had been bugging her for quite some time and that had forced her to drink tea to treat it. Maybe the spill was God's way of helping her obey the Word of Wisdom... you know, like STDs are God's way of helping people obey the Law of Chastity)

Anyway, while we were talking about concussions, my grandmother said that she saw sparkles (which is WAY more exciting than the boring stars that other people report seeing). I told her that I remember seeing sparkles, too, when I sustained the most horrific head injury of my life: The Hose Incident of 1988. I talked about this before, but in case you're a newcomer to this blog and haven't gone back and read every one of my posts to be regaled with it's greatness (and if you haven't, what's up with THAT?!), here is the story:

One day, I got stuck with the task of watering our 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 the hose up and down and back and forth--expending WAY more energy than if I were to simply walk back and free it-- 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 (during which time I saw the sparkles against a dark backdrop and was inspired to visit Studio 54), 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! Senseless violence in rural Idaho even in those days! I stumbled back to the house, all the while telling myself my name, address, phone number, preferred brand of bacon bits, and the synopsis to last week's episode of Knight Rider 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, none of my enemies or nemises had that good of aim, two, a rock thrown that distance would have left more than a series of threaded lines on my forehead, and three, 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. Now the internets know why I have a slight bump on my forehead, why I'm into whips and chains, and why, for a short time, I was completely obedient to the Third Commandment.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

But you ARE a British superspy. No way, that's M.