Based on Actual Events

One does not assume that a child at the tender age of 4 years old would be a regular at the local ER, but I was not your normal 4 year old. Three trips to the emergency room in one year, that might be a record!

The following 'memories' have become somewhat like tall tales in my mind, since I don't actually have full and complete memories of any of the following events. The stories have been told in my family multiple times and in evolving variations. Therefore, I've created movies of the events in my vivid imagination. Full color and everything.

Since I don't know in which order my life threatening would-be miracles happened, I'll just start with the messiest.

The Bottle
My brother, Don, was playing with his friend Mike Brat (seriously, the kids last name was Brat) and another boy in the neighborhood wanted to play with them. They did not want to play with this kid, I don't remember his name so let's just call him Bob. They sent Bob away to follow his own path in this world. Kids can be so cruel.

Meanwhile, little sister Emmy Lou (that's me in case you're a bit slow today) is playing with the next door neighbors new puppies under the swing set behind our house. There was a big field right behind our house with waist high grass. It might be knee high grass now, but I was short then. I look to my right and see Bob meandering aimlessly through the tall grass. He is not walking in a straight line, but moving side to side like he's kicking something. I decide the puppies are funner than some kid even my brother didn't want to play with and focus my 4 year old attention back on them. (Yes I know funner is not a word, this is my story not yours.)

WHAM!!

Blinding, concussive pain! I fall over onto my side. What happened!? I sit up and try to look at the puppies. They are turning red. Drops of red are falling all over them. I stand up and walk towards my sister Andi and her friend Sonya playing in the sandbox nearby. As I get closer, Andi starts screaming. Why is she screaming like that? She runs towards me and screams more. I do not know what is going on, but her screaming scares me more than anything, so I start screaming. Grabbing my hand she runs towards the house, dragging me along frightened and bewildered. Running into the house, my mother has heard the commotion and meets us at the door. More screaming and general franticness.

Up to this point, I still do not know what is going on. I finally look down. I am covered in bright red blood! The entire right side of my body seems to be soaked in my warm lifejuice. Yikes! This is the last actual memory I have of the event. In my minds eye, I can very clearly look down and see the blood on my clothes. I'm sure I lost it at this point.

Mom slaps a towel on the side of my profusely bleeding head. Here's the thing about head wounds, they bleed incessantly. It is very difficult to stem the bleeding, especially from a large head wound, as this would appear to be. The blood mixed with my hair, matting it to the side of my head. My mother believed I had cut my ear off. Holy Smokes is that what happened?!

She slowly pulls the towel away, and a flap of my scalp sticks to it. Yum. I would bet that the bleeding is pretty heightened at this point. Mom wraps me in a blanket, so I do not lose my mind staring at my own blood, and runs outside - screaming sister in tow. She runs around the front of the house to where the car should be in the driveway. (Did you notice the "should be"? That's called foreshadowing!) And what does she find? Absolutely nothing. There is no car! My dad conveniently had the car that day. Well I guess it was convenient for him, not for us. Everything really does matter on point of view and circumstance doesn't it? But I digress.

Supermom sees a little old lady neighbor in her driveway a few houses away (I think this is the same lady who's window I broke with a rock, or maybe it was a baseball. Mom forced me to go to her front door all by myself and say I was sorry. I was mad then, but I guess she helped save my life so I should have been a bit nicer. And now, back to our feature presentation...) So the little old lady is having a nice afternoon, maybe went to the store to get some tea and crumpets only to come home and find a motley, frantic woman (mom) carrying a blood soaked, inconsolable child (me) and a delirious screaming sister come running up to her begging to put said blood soaked child in her car. That would just ruin your afternoon wouldn't it?

Off the the ER we go. The little old lady gets us all there safely, and comes back to sit in our driveway. When my dad does come home with the convenient car, he sees this strange old woman in his driveway. She tells him 'They're at the emergency room, they're OK." Talk about throwing someone for a loop.

So here's what happened, Bob was kicking a broken Pepsi bottle through the field behind my house. He kicked it into the air and tagged me on the side of my skull, directly between my right ear and temple. A couple inches north and it would have hit my temple and could have killed me. A couple inches south, it would have hit my ear and disfigured me for life. Instead it hit solid bone and cut a clean triangle shaped slice through my scalp. I think I got 30-something stitches, but I could be exaggerating.
After the docs sewed me up and warned me not to play with jilted boys and broken bottles (a lesson that took years to learn) I made it back home. I now have a fancy triangle shaped scar on the side of my head. I'll be happy to show you, if you like.

My next memory of this experience was Bob coming to my house to apologizing for attempted murder. He brought me a very cool wooden Pinocchio puzzle and a card that said "I'm sorry. -Bob". Poignant and thought provoking, real wordsmith Bob was. I still have that Pinocchio puzzle and most of the pieces.

Moral of the story: Big brothers should be more careful who they play with, it's the little sisters who pay for it!