Because I listen to podcasts all day at work, two totally different casts talked about injuries they had sustained as children. Mom will tell you that my brother and I were accident prone throughout our childhoods. She will also tell you that the nurses at the local emergency rooms knew her on a first name basis:
“Which one is it this time, Erna, and what did they do?”
One such story of mine did not precipitate a trip to an emergency room, but only a call to a nurse friend of hers. This is that story:
We lived on a street that had about nine children on it. Since we were all about the same age, we played together everyday. On this particular day, we were in a backyard across the street from our home, playing our version of “HORSE”. When we got bored with that, we picked up a bouncy rubber ball and started a loose version of softball. My brother was tossing it underhand to me and I smacked it with an aluminum bat into the “field”, with the unwritten understanding that if it were caught, I would be out.
Apparently, Doug, my brother, was getting a little miffed that no one was catching the ball to get me out, so he chucked one at me…overhand…at my head!
Being only about 10-years old and fearless, I thought I could hit the ball that was headed for my face, so I got the bat up there. The series of events that followed are these:
- Ball heads for face
- Bat goes up
- Ball hits bat
- Bat hits head
I knew it was wrong the second I heard the “CLANG” inside my head. I dropped the bat to the ground, threw my hand up to my forehead, and turned for home at a fast pace. Running into the house, I encountered mom. She told me to move my hand away from my forehead. I remember her gasping and then she ran for the phone. I looked in the mirror and saw that there was half of an egg sitting on my forehead, turning seriously purple and getting bigger with every passing second. Her nurse friend told her that I just needed to be watched for concussion and that was the end of my playday.
Maybe this incident was the beginning of my spiraling CRS issues…
But what do I know….
