Another kick in the head...

The second time I was unconscious was when I was about twelve. I was playing with Tony and Pete, two brothers who lived across the street from me. Tony and Pete were trouble. Seems they were always up to something stupid or dangerous. I was lucky enough to avoid getting seriously hurt by the stupid stuff , and smart enough to stay out of the real dangerous stuff (though I witnessed a lot of it).

Pete, the younger of the two brothers and about my age, was the one who usually got hurt. He got hurt when we had a contest to see who could jump out of the tree from the highest branch. He got hurt when we spent a summer afternoon setting various things on fire. He got hurt when he and Tony took turns throwing darts at each other at twenty paces. He got hurt when he and Tony had a “knife” fight with knives fashioned out of sharpened wooden sticks. He got hurt trying to prove how tough he was by letting fireworks go off in his hand. Pete’s dead now. Seems he met a guy who had a little more to prove than he did.

One night we were playing in Tony’s and Pete’s bedroom. I think the name of the game is Blind Man’s Bluff. You’ve probably played it. It’s where one person is blindfolded, the lights are turned out, and the person has to catch one of the others. Tony and Pete had a bunk bed, and we’d made a rule that the top bunk was out of bounds—a very sensible rule as it turns out.

So, it was my turn to be the Blind Man. We turned off the lights, I put on the blind fold, and I proceeded to flail about the room in search of Pete and Tony. My hearing was pretty good back then, and I could hear them moving around, sometimes giggling or whispering. As I closed in on one of them, I heard feet on the bunk ladder followed by some creaking on the top bunk.

“No fair,” said I. “The top is out of bounds.”

“I’m not on the top,” laughed Tony, his voice clearly coming from on high.

So, I did the only sensible thing a young boy can do. In the dark, wearing a blind fold, I located, then climbed, the ladder. I pulled myself up to the foot of the bed, then waited silently on hands and knees, straining for the slightest hint of movement.

When it finally came, I crept cautiously toward it, one arm extended. More movement. I advanced. Still more. I advanced further, certain I was about to connect with Tony and expose his trickery. But instead… the abyss. I remember shifting my weight forward onto my leading arm, and the shock as my hand found only air and my weight simply continued to shift. Then I remember… nothing.

I don’t know how long I was out on the hardwood floor, but it was a while. I awoke stunned, completely disoriented. My head hurt too much to hurt, the way your tongue hurts when you just about bite it in half. I can still feel the dull, thick-witted struggle to comprehend where I was and what had happened. I later learned that our mothers, who had been visiting in the living room, came to investigate the thundering boom, but somehow Tony and Pete had convinced them that all was well.

I really don’t recall much else about that night except for the pain and the numbness that wouldn’t go away. I went years without thinking about it. But now when I do, it seems like I can still feel the effects of that fall. And I wonder whether the four times I’ve been unconscious, but particularly this time, have had anything to do with the various problems I have today—the extreme depression that continues to baffle the doctors and their treatments, the trouble focusing, the disconnect.