It was hot, so like any other Panama City Trailerpark boy, I was in cutoffs and dirty white converse sneakers. The kid on the other side of the ditch was buzz-cut and bronze colored just like me, only barefoot, his parents were poor. We were tossing a pair of Jarts over the low-hanging power-lines which ran parallel to the dolomite road and his trailer house. White and Blue. It was deep summer and everything was emerald green, so there must have been a recent rain, as it would have been dusty otherwise.
A short fence ran below the power lines and there was a shallow ditch just in front of the fence. I stood on the roadside, in the crushed dolomite, because I had shoes and he didn't. He is looking up, with his right hand high and quick as lightening at just the right moment, he snatches the jart right out of the air. Grinning like he'd won a gold medal, he watched me sail the second one up, and wham, another perfect performance!...
We'd been at this for a while now, because apparently he'd gotten bored with the agreed upon rules of throw-catch-confirm-ready-throw-catch - Brag on each other - - repeat
I snatched the first one out of the air like a pro, proud of another fine catch. I look over the short fence,. I think he was a year older than me, I looked up to him a little, and ... well my memories aren't very clear before this memory, and after wards it took a while I think before everything got back into a harmonious system. I have vague notions that his family life was horrible. I witnessed a ... well I saw him and another boy doing things boys weren't supposed to, and even then, when they got old enough it was supposed to be with a girl! And that paragraph is destined for another story.
But I look over the fence, and little bronzed trailer park boy has a grin from ear to ear, but no Jart. And then two things happened at once, and my exact perception of time isn't that great for that moment, but my primary memory is of how cartoon like he looked. His eyes suddenly got double their size, his hands began to fly up to his mouth and he tried to say something. Something hit me in the head. And then He just drained of all color. He literally went from bronze boy to what my redneck brain could only think of as (no offense) a yankee! It was like the color fell out of him, through his feet. Something was ran down my nose, and dripped off my nose and into my right shoe. It was red, and more of it fell all around my foot as I was looking at my foot. Then, my head kinda wiggled, and the jart landed on the ground at my feet.
About then, the A+B=C of it all hit me and I ran and I screamed all the way home. It as a fair run for a 6yr old, I'd say just over a quarter mile. In the kitchen door, I didn't want to bleed on the carpet, that was a standing rule, no bleeding on the carpet, or else.
"Moooooooooommmmmm!"
She is in the kitchen leaned up against the counter with the kind of dramatic lean that only a red-headed trailer park wife of the trailer sales lot of Cedar Grove, Florida can have. Smoking another link in her chain... and watching All My Children, ironically. And she turns disgustedly from the TV, as I expected, but then she had a whole body spasm and looked momentarily shocked. And then busted loose with the standard string of words in trailer parks to this day, "What the hell's wrong with you, quit that crying, what are you a wimp or something" And that is very close to a quote, because I've heard that part of the story at more than one get together. From her. It's a family tale. :)
And I stopped crying, because I knew one thing for damn sure, I was no wimp. And she cleaned it up with some peroxide, and I don't think a doctor was even considered right away, because I don't really remember well at all for a long time after that.
there's the memory of my parents being physically violent, that stuck out. We moved shortly thereafter, to Crystal River and they were divorced shortly after that...
I'll get down to the last bit. I get curious tonight and I hit wikipidia and start feeling the scar and imagining the angle of entry, and I narrow it down to the portion of the brain that is responsible for Self Awareness.
Self-awareness is the awareness of the self as separate from the thoughts that are occurring at any point in time. Without self awareness the self perceives and believes the thoughts that are occurring to be who the self is. Self awareness gives one the option or choice to choose thoughts being thought rather than simply thinking the thoughts that are stimulated from the accumulative events leading up to the circumstances of the moment.
I got really lucky though, I'm guessing that the Jart had to enter the skull at a depth of an inch or so, just to have enough stuff there to hold it upright, and it fell out on it's own accord so it didn't get me as deep as the boy in the video, and it was miraculously well centered so that the point of intrusion likely swept between the hemispheres and cause only surface damage.
I almost have a headache suddenly. But I'm glad I found this out because it sure explains alot! I've got an excuse for being an insufferable know it all with the bad habit of saying things that probably shouldn't be said, and in a calm rational manner. I'm just trying to help!
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