Flashback Friday #3

I'm dying. No, let me rephrase that. (Roll eyes back in head, unhinge jaw, and bellow from the most inner part of your being) I'M DYING!!!

This was a familiar refrain heard around my house when I was but a lad. I must have felt that I was more fragile than a Ming Dynasty vase or something. Anytime I was injured in any way, I seemed to me that I was dying.

The earliest remembrance of this line comes when I was about six or seven. We were roasting hot dogs & marshmallows out back with the neighbor kids. One of the neighbors caught his mallow on fire and waved it around trying to put out the fire. SPLAT, flaming marshmallow on my bare leg (this is only one of the reasons that I am not outside in shorts anymore). I screamed, but didn't die. The fireball had left a blister on my leg as big as a silver dollar (Eisenhower, not Sacajawea). I somehow got the idea that if that blister popped, I would die (what a great way to keep a kid from picking at it).

Later that week, my brother (Sir Gattabout) was pulling me up the driveway at a rapid trot in our Radio Flyer wagon. He took a turn quickly, and spilled me out of the wagon into the gravel. That hurt. I looked down at my leg, and the blister was gone, replaced with a nasty scrape. I let out a scream that would frighten any Halloween ghoul. "I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying" I yelled out, and ran as fast as my wounded body could go. Mom assured me that I was still quite alive.

Another such instance came about two years later. While playing tag my brother went up a tree, and wouldn't come down, therefore he won because I couldn't tag him. I told him, you come down right now. He jumped from one branch to another only to hear a sickening CRACK! The branch broke under his weight, and he plummeted earthward. Luckily he had a little brother directly beneath him to cushion his fall. As he landed upon me, all of the air in my lungs was knocked out. I couldn't breathe. I ran into the house to my parents mouthing the words "I'm dying, I'm dying". If you try telling somebody something when you can't breathe, they just look at you strange, and say "what?". As I was turning blue, dad figured I had the wind knocked out of me, so he whomps me on the back. Sweet air flowed into my lungs. I then proceeded to continue with my dying monologue.

The last such instance that I will bring forth deals with the mother of all boils that I had on my neck. Dad wanted to lance it, but, OH NO, you're not coming near me with that needle. Mom had some kind of cream that she applied daily. After a while, it looked like I had a mutant hickey on my neck. While over at my cousins' house (Aunt Shelly & Uncle Phil's from last post) playing "Army", one of my cousins played some "gorilla warfare" on me.(yes gorilla, not guerrilla) He was hiding up a tree, and jumped out and grabbed my neck. The boil exploded like the Hindenburg. I was sure I was dying then, but Aunt Shelly told me to shut up and go back outside and play (her kids, all 14 of them, spent ALOT of time outside playing).

To this day, there are times I whine & moan when I'm not feeling well, or hurting. However, I know that I'm not dying, because Lady Nottaguy-TYG tells me I'm not.