I’ve a few scars on my head that most don’t know about. I have only shaved my head twice – high school and USAF. The upside down L on my right side was given to me courtesy of the Byrd brothers – Ricky and Tony. One on Tuesday and one on Thursday, the same week. It even happened under exactly the same circumstances. A gang, a billboard, a tree house, a dare and a rock. Hard to believe but for a very brief time, I was a member of a gang. It wasn’t a serious gang. No tats, no robbing, no graffiti and my personal favorite no killing. I’m not even sure if it had a name. The closest I came to one was Cobbs Creek. It’s where we met most of the time. Anyway, I was at the fortress on Tuesday night, approaching dusk. It was just a small clearing right behind a group of billboards alongside a busy street. We would mostly just hang out, smoke cigarettes and climb atop the billboards and check out the women during rush hour. We were teenagers after all! On Tuesday, I was hanging with Tony and we decided to race to our tree house at the top of the next hill behind a two-story office building. It meant crossing an empty gravel parking lot, going behind an office building and shinnying up a rope to climb onto a wooden platform. All went as I expected, or so I thought. I was the only one who ran up the hill and climbed up to the tree house. Just before I climbed up onto the platform, I felt a pain on the right side of my head and a ringing in the same ear. I immediately climbed down, trying not to fall the two stories to the ground. I then ran down the hill, past Tony, back to the fortress and up the street to my house (about 3 blocks). My sister, being home alone, promised that she would keep this to herself, even though I was crying and bleeding.
Now the only you need do is change the day to Thursday and the brother to Ricky, and you will see how THAT day ended. Weird huh?
Now there is one more scar but on the opposite side of my head. This I got quite a few years earlier. I was riding my new bike that I got for my 8th birthday (which I shared with my dad). I was on the blacktop playground behind my school riding aimlessly. I was riding quite close to the building and when I came a corner of the building, which had a dirt ramp on its side, I ran head on with another kid riding his bike down that same ramp. I don’t remember the collision or who was riding the bike or much of anything else. When I awoke, I was being lifted into an ambulance and heading to the hospital. When I arrived, an x-ray was done on my hip. When it was developed, two doctors got together and within my earshot, argued as to whether I could go home or my hip was broken. I think you can imagine what this youngster was wishing for. After about 30 minutes, they let my folks take me home. Whew! Now they just had to keep an eye on me in case of concussion but that they could do from home. :)
Went head first through a window in high school. Cut my upper lip that would later show up when I grew a mustache.
In October, 1996, I was washing Raven in the bathtub. She looked like a scrawny rat when she was all wet. I don’t think I did anything wrong except ignore the cardinal rule which states don’t wash a cat if they don’t like the water! She sure didn’t. She bit the inside tip of my left thumb. I screamed at the top of my lungs as it sure hurt. The only way I got her to let go was squeeze her neck HARD! When she did so did I. I handed her off to Liz, who was helping, and I tended my “wound”. I ran it under water and after some discussion we all went to the emergency room. It being a Saturday night, hoped it wasn’t too busy – and it wasn’t. Being seen right away sure helped me but the doctor didn’t seem too happy. He wasn’t very personable either to me or the nurse. After it was cleaned and dressed I asked. “Now what?” I was first told to change the bandage daily; then told to leave it covered. After a week it got infected and had to be operated on. Nice. What should have happened was to change the bandage daily and then after a few days leave it covered in the day and let it breathe at night. That’s what the surgeon said anyway …
