Yet Another Fond Childhood Memory

It was summer, and as usual, I have no idea how old I was (some things are a blur like that, and this post should explain why).

It was a wonderful summer day in Indiana, and I was playing baseball with the neighborhood boys.  Yes, amazingly enough I was a tomboy and actually taught most of the neighborhood boys how to play football.

Anyhoo, I was pitching because I was the only one that could reliably get the ball over the plate, and didn't throw like a girl.

When this happened:

 Yep, a line drive straight to the face.  I recall looking at the sun, then wondering if I would be blind in my remaining good eye for looking straight at the sun, then realizing that half of my face was most likely gone from getting hit by the baseball, and wondering why there were stars when the sun was out.

I managed to crawl next door to my house (clutching a bush on the way to keep myself from floating off the earth), and into the house, where I promptly told my mom what happened.  She told me to put some ice on my eye. 

When my dad got home, he looked at my lovely shiner and pronounced that I needed to go back out the next day and play ball, otherwise I would be afraid to play ball again.  Something about falling off a horse, blah blah, where's dinner.

Next day, bright and shiny, the neighborhood baseball game started up, and there I was, black eye nearly closed from swelling, ball mitt, playing outfield.  Hey, I'm not stupid, no way was I going to pitch again.

Around the 3rd pitch, one kid hit a fly ball straight up in the air.  I got it, I got it, I got it... damn that sun is bright, I lost it, hands down and:

Oh yeah, that hurt.  I recall being crumpled in a ball.  I recall being under the bush again, I vaguely recall crawling up our back stairs, I recall my mom screaming at the nosy neighbor down the street to get off the stupid party line because nobody wanted to hear how she was sleeping around on her husband while he was at work because we already all knew she was sleeping around on her husband while he was at work and he didn't care because he was sleeping with his secretary, so get off the line so she could call the doctor for me before I died.  Died?  Lovely.

The doctor told my mom that I needed to stay awake or else I would likely lapse into a coma and die or become a zucchini or other vegetable that you can make into bread, and that she should watch me for vomiting, bleeding from the ears, nose, and eyes, or my brain oozing out somewhere.  Ok, I totally have no idea what the doctor told her, other than when she told me: "the doctor says he should look at you".

She loaded me up in the blue van with black spots (another story) that smelled like gas fumes (urp) and hauled me to the doctor's office.  Our doctor (Doc Bowser) use to have a cool old timey office on main street that had wooden floors and where I got my polio vaccine and chiclet gum, but they moved to one of those new fangly modern offices that smelled like plastic carpeting (urp).

The receptionist told us that we had to wait. So I did this:

Which amazingly opened a room for us immediately.  I was diagnosed with 2 concussions in 2 days... a Goshen record that probably still stands.  Nothing they could do except tell my mom to "keep an eye on me", which meant that I was forced to go with my mom to the Green Stamp redemption place the next day and lay in the van in abject nauseous misery while she stood in line to get something with the 14,000 books of stamps she had collected. 

Good times!