Why Yes, There does happen to be a divot in my forehead.

I'm growing a horn. For serious. An actual horn. I'm not joshing.

Anyway, I'm bored so I'm feeling the topography of my forehead to see if my horn will be lonely and I feel the divot that has been in my head for about 17 years now and I thought...that'll be a good story.

Swimmy flashback stuff.

I was a pretty lanky, clumsy kid. I've retained the clumsiness. The lankiness, not so much. My gramma had this theory that we weren't allowed to play inside unless there were gale force winds outside so we, my cousins and I, were at the kid across the street from my gramma's house. We were probably hopped up on icee pops and Coke. The soda, not the drug.

My two cousins have no natural fear of anything. This has carried over into their adult lives without much incidence. Which I must honestly admit is more than a little amazing.


So there are five of us. Four boys and me. I happen to have been the oldest and the brains of the operation. Although I can't say without a doubt who decided we should play kickball. Or who picked out the landmarks that were to be the bases.

The other thing you need to understand is that as a child I was exactly the way I am now. Competitive as hell with a fairly large smart ass streak. 'Of course I must go first', I insisted. 'Of course, because I'm the oldest.'

Apparently since I went first I was the first to notice that there was a bird feeder in front of second base, which happened to be a dogwood tree. Needless to say that a lanky 10 year old can gain a lot of momentum in the short distance between home plate and first base and then increase that momentum from first to second.

I run smack-dab into the bird feeder. I imagine that my head snapped backwards and my feet kept going. I imagine this because A) I couldn't watch my ownself run, that's absurd and B) I was knocked out cold.

I woke up in an eerie silence staring at steeply swaying, yet mangled bird-feeder spewing seed as it completed it's swing back and forth. Then one by one 4 heads come into my field of view. Two were smiling, (Family, what can I say?) one was grimacing and one looked languid and pale. That's how I knew there was probably a fair amount of blood oozing from head. Poor kid never really could handle the sight of blood too well.

Thankfully the neighbor kid's mom was a nurse and she had enough sense to know that if things were quiet, someone was bleeding. (I'll say here that I spent a lot of blood at their house, I was never sure why.) She waited to deal with her own swooning child until she had staunched my bleeding and determined I didn't need stitches. Then promptly sent us across the street where I was instructed to stay on the porch because Mamow didn't want blood on her carpet.

It healed up quite nicely and I don't even have a scar. But if you ever have occasion to run your finger over my forehead you'll notice that there is a good sized divot in it. Yes, I chipped my skull on a birdfeeder.

Chalk yet another mishap to my inability to pay attention and my need to show off.