From the bowels of my hard drive

No Royals game tonight, so here’s a thing about the time I broke my face on a floor. The story is totally true, by the way.
From somewhere in my hard drive: A Face Smashing
What can a girl learn from breaking her face on a floor?
It all started fairly innocently. I didn’t think twice about stepping out onto the gleaming gym floor for another day of kickball. I was a busy little freshman, and P.E. was just a small part of my day: I still had golf practice, homework, chores, and the all-important Nintendo time to accomplish. Though this day of P.E. had innocuous beginnings, it ended with me unconscious in a pool of blood, and about 80 eighth- and ninth graders wondering if I was dead.
My team was on defense in a close game — the competition was always tight because Coach W. had quite a knack for picking fair teams. Anyway, the kid who was at the plate kicked it high, straight toward the ceiling. I started toward the ball, never taking my eye off its spinning red form growing larger and larger as it approached my outstretched hands. Well, my teammate Joel was equally focused on making the catch, and neither of us saw the other until it was too late. He jumped and I didn’t, so his bony knee jabbed me in the ribs, not too far beneath my clavicle, and I fell down backwards.
That much was really not a big deal. At that point, all I had suffered was a bruised rib, some floor burns on my elbows, and a second or three of unconsciousness. As I lay there on the floor, winded and slightly groggy, another classmate leaned in, offering me his hand. Part of my brain was protesting, telling me I should lie down for a few more seconds before trying to stand up. The other part argued right back, and told the first part to not be such a sissy. So I stood up.
It didn’t take long to realize that I should not have done that. Since my body wasn’t yet ready to stand up, I blacked out again and began to fall forward. Being unconscious and all, I really didn’t have the mental capacity to think, “Oh crap! I’m falling, and I should perhaps put my arms out to stop that!” so I just fell. I was on my feet one second, and then on my face the next.
As you can imagine, a face falling to the floor from five and a half feet up doesn’t stand a very good chance. The floor emerged as the victor in this battle, taking casualties such as my nose and eye sockets. I came away from the ordeal with a broken nose, two very darkly blackened eyes, and a concussion.
Contrary to what most high school girls might do, I didn’t try to cover up my black eyes. They made me look tough, and I had a ton of fun thinking of imaginative stories to tell people who asked how I got them. And due to the concussion, I didn’t have to go to P.E. class for two weeks, and instead got into a study hall. The study hall was fun, but not very useful, since most of my teachers took pity on me and didn’t make me do any assignments for those weeks.
So what can someone learn from such an ordeal? Plenty, as it turns out. One immediate lesson I learned was that getting a concussion is quite detrimental to one’s golf scores, which was unfortunate because I had to compete in the district meet a mere 9 days after my floor-face fiasco happened. It wasn’t pretty.
Four years later, my nose is an excellent barometer; I can feel even the slightest change in atmospheric pressure. When in the presence of fluorescent lights, I can tell you whether the lights are of high quality based on how bad of a headache they give me. I guess that’s just proof that my high school isn’t your typical learning environment.

Labels: life in general

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