"My Brain Hurts"

When I was six or seven years old, I earned myself a pretty decent concussion. I was swinging back and forth between two propped open doors, and my reverse momentum was apparently unequal to the gravitational forces underneath me. My hands slipped off of the door handles and I smacked my forehead on the concrete floor, thus rendering me wobbly and blind for about two days. After what seemed like an eternity of staring at a huge black circle that enveloped 95 percent of my field of vision, my sight eventually returned to normal.

If anyone ever asks if I was dropped on my head as a child, though, from then on I had to answer affirmatively.

The doctor called it a "mild" concussion, and I've spent the years since trying to prevent my head from ever hitting the concrete at terminal velocity again. Today I found out there's virtually no difference between concrete and drywall with respect to head injuries.

When our previously mentioned door alarm sounded at 6 a.m. today—meaning that Connor's internal clock is about as stable as a bag of popcorn in the microwave—I was in an incredibly deep sleep. I'm talkin' could've-been-sleeping-in-my-own-poop-and-wouldn't-have-known deep. For some reason, though, the alarm woke me up instantly. I jumped out of bed and attempted to throw my pants while simultaneously bolting out of the room.

THUD.

I ran forehead-first into the wall by the bed, and crumpled to the floor as if I'd just, well, run into a wall. I would say that I misjudged the distance to the hallway but that would imply that there was some thought behind this. Keep in mind, also, that this entire scene unfolded before the three-second door alarm was even through chiming. I slowly made my way out into the hall and saw that Stacey—who was getting ready for work—was tending to Connor. Groggily, I made my way back to bed. After all, this is the same guy who went right back to sleep, bloody sheets and all, after I broke my nose in my sleep when I was 15 (a stereo fell off of my headboard and onto my face... don't ask).

I still feel like there's a railroad spike poking through my cerebral cortex, and my eyes are jiggling like Dolly Parton on a see-saw, but I'm slowly returning to normal—relatively speaking, of course. I have a nice acorn-sized lump on my forehead that will probably turn purple in a day or two. But, since I don't have a 'real' job right now, I don't really care.

Of course, I may try and be more careful tomorrow.