Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Concussions I Have Known

My memory is fuzzy, so this may be an incomplete list. I'll just list them now and will flesh some of them out later. This will give friends and family time to remind me of any I may have missed.

1. Age 1. Bouncing on Dad's stomach as he lay on his back on the living room floor, knocked head into coffee table. Awoke in hospital and puked in Dad's shirt pocket.

2. Age 9. Covered in bruises from teaching self to ride bike (finally), knocked out by falling light fixture in kitchen.

There have got to be some more in here, especially with all the sports in grammar and high school, but the next one I can recall is in college. Mom, what say you?

3. Age 20. Playing softball, running from second to third, clipped short stop's foot and did somersault in the air over her. Lights out when I hit the ground.

4. Age 26. Performing with ComedySportz in Raleigh, NC. Smacked head into stage accidentally. Vision shot, lightheaded, felt like I was going to puke, but director didn't believe me so I kept on keeping on. Improv while you're suffering from a concussion is fun!

5. Age 31. Playing softball with work team. Ball thrown from outfield to second baseman as I'm running to second. Ball goes over second baseman's glove -- into my forehead. As my friends like to remind me whenever this story comes up, I then dropped like a sack of potatoes. One of many times I wish there was a video so I could see what in the heck happened.

6. Age 38. Playing adult kickball. Should have slid into second, but realized too late. Had to tag second and hang on. Something went terribly wrong and I tripped over the second baseman's foot. I broke my arm on the way down and landed on my head. Knocked out cold. Came up determined to play though (so we wouldn't forfeit) but have no memory of tripping, falling, landing, the last inning, most of the hospital and about 4 hours of that night. Again, video would be helpful...

Boy, this only brings us to six. I went through them one day and thought I had about ten. As you can imagine, my memory isn't the greatest at this point. I have no idea why... ;)

3 comments:

justbeachy said...

A little off on the ages for the first two. First one was age 3, second one was age 7. Think there was a field hockey incident, too. Know there were more, but my memory is worse than yours.

AJ said...

I thought I had one at 1? I'll take your word for it. But the light fixture was definitely 9. Trust me, I was painfully aware that I still didn't know how to ride a bike at 9. Did I have a concussion when I tried to fly off the front porch? That might have been 7... Or else you're thinking of when I started passing out. Gosh, we've had some fun. :)

lauren said...

Christ! You would think that you had an enormous head and couldn't help but slam it into things...
The number of head slams is really kind of frightening. you should do a long term study.