Board, Meet Head

To say I was energetic and rambunctious as a child is a bit like saying the universe is big. While it captures the essence of the thing, it fails to convey the sheer scope and magnitude of it. Mostly, I think I was that way because of a genetic predisposition to that sort of personality type and its corresponding behaviors. However, I have little doubt that environmental factors played a major role in exacerbating my hyperactive streak. Specifically, in this case I am referring to diet. More specifically I am referring to the very high sugar content of my diet at that time. A typical day featured Lucky Charms for breakfast, up to an entire 2L of Mountain Dew or any other soda we might have on hand, and whatever assorted cookies, candies, or cakes I could lay my grubby little hands on. I had very loving parents, and I think overall they did a very good job raising two troubled and troubling children, but for one major exception which was what they allowed, and in some cases encouraged, me to eat. Granted, back in the early 1980s when I grew up less was known about the dangers of sugar, but even then it was a well established fact that sugar made kids hyper, and I was hyper enough for three kids in my sleep, let alone when wide awake after powering down an entire carton of oreo cookies or four snickers bars or both. In my parents defense, at that time we had much bigger concerns such as the dangers of communism, and the possibility that the Soviets might lob a few thousand nukes our way sparking a genocidal global thermonuclear war that would end in the death of the entire planet, so I cut them some slack on the sugar thing. Despite my truly awful diet I remained skinny as a rail throughout my childhood and to this day, again a fortunate happenstance of genetics and not through any great efforts on my part.

In large part I stayed thin because my hyperactive nature manifested mostly as an inability to ever sit still. I never stopped doing something or moving some part of my body at all times. This is also a trait I very much carry forward to this day. My number one enemy then, as now, was boredom. Following close behind at number two was (and still remains) boredom's close cousin, sitting still. Fortunately, I grew up in a very rural area with plentiful space for me to burn off my seemingly endless energies. We were surrounded on all sides by deep woods. Some of my favorite activities included running through them at all hours screaming at the top of my lungs, setting various parts of them on fire and/or blowing them up with homemade chemical bombs and/or fireworks, and chopping down small trees, bushes, or any other living thing that got in my way. Any combination of the above listed activities was possible with my favorite and usual being all. This penchant for chopping down trees got me in serious hot water on two occasions. The first was when I cut down a tree which was home to a very large nest of yellow jackets. The bees did not take kindly to losing their home to a maniacal kid wielding a hatchet and proceeded to sting me mercilessly for what must have been at least a half mile as I ran screaming and flailing home. The second was when I "accidentally" chopped down a very large and very nice fir tree which happened to sit on a Christmas tree farm run by one of our neighbors. I like to think I was a young George Washington, except it was a fir tree not a cherry tree and I used a hatchet rather than an axe. Also, unlike George Washington and the cherry tree the fir cutting thing from my childhood actually happened and, unlike George Washington, I did not end up becoming the first president of the United States of America.

These incidents did little to dampen my enthusiasm for swinging a hatchet at things and that obsession led to another incident which I still remember vividly to this very day. The reason it is so so seared into my memory is because of the outcome (the end of the story) which was one of my best friends, Mike Miller, screaming in agony, blood pouring down his face, a two foot long two by four stuck to his skull. The board was held fast to his head by a nail which had been protruding out of said board when it fell on him from about ten feet overhead. The blood was the unfortunate result of the nail which had penetrated his skull. I took all this in within seconds, the blood, the board, the nail, as I looked at poor Mike in horror. Between his screams and tears he was begging me to help him, pleading for me to do something. And so I did, I turned and ran the opposite direction toward my home just as fast as my scrawny little legs would take me.

At this point you may be thinking wow, what a brave young man. Dan running as swiftly as a deer to his home to fetch help for his gravely injured comrade. If you are thinking along those lines, let me stop you right there.

You can put away the medal for bravery you were going to hang around my neck, because in fact I was running home, not to retrieve help, but rather so that I could find the nearest hiding spot, my bedroom closet, sit down in it, and cry like a baby until someone inevitably found me and drug me off to jail for bestfriendacide.

At least, that was the fear which drove me so coward like to my closet, and to inconsolable tears for the better part of one summer afternoon. At some point I fell asleep and was awoken by my parents just as night had begun to fall. I knew exactly what time it was because at that same time every night for the entire time we lived in that particular home a whippoorwill began to chirp, and it did not stop chirping until the break of dawn the following day. This particular whippoorwill lived in a nest just outside my bedroom window and nearly drove me to suicide on at least a hundred occasions. The lack of sleep caused by that one bird (and subsequent generations) almost certainly contributed to my many behavioral issues and nearly cost me my sanity at a very young age. But, I digress. If you were paying attention earlier you have likely already guessed that there must be some connection between my great obsession with chopping things and my friend Mike's serious injury. If you did guess there was a connection, congratulations you are a regular Sherlock Holmes. If you did not make such a connection, I am afraid you are consigned to Watson status for the remainder of your natural life.

The particular activity which my friend Mike and I were partaking in when his grievous injuries occurred was one with which not many are likely very familiar. It is a somewhat peculiar pursuit and only continues to this day among a very select subset of hyperactive and destructive youth. This time honored tradition is known as the treehouse teardown and it involves destroying a perfectly good treehouse for reason(s) that seem to make sense at the time but upon closer inspection do not stand up to much scrutiny. In our case that reason was because we were bored. Mike and I were both big fans of destroying things, and we both typically carried hatchets with us when we prowled the woods. Those were just two of the reasons we were such good friends. The other reasons included our shared love of mixing together random chemicals to determine which might explode or burn, and burning things in a general sense either with random chemicals or with gasoline or most often both. Destroying a treehouse was a rare treat and after the decision had been made we set about our task with reckless abandon. For reasons that have been lost to the dustbin of history Mike decided he would begin at the base of the rickety structure while I climbed to a spot near the top. Once there I immediately spotted several two by fours comprising part of the treehouse floor that appeared to have come loose.

One of the first lessons you learn about destroying things as a kid is that it is much easier to destroy things which are shoddily constructed and/or already partially destroyed than things which are solidly built and/or in good condition.

With this lesson in mind I took aim at the loose two by fours and begun to chop. And chop I did, swinging away wildly at a furious pace. Safety and precaution were words with which I was not familiar and the idea that someone could get hurt never once crossed my mind. All I knew was that these were boards, they were loose, I had a hatchet, and it was my job to destroy those boards with my hatchet in any way I could as quickly and as mercilessly as I was able. It was the very first board I managed to completely free from the floor that impaled poor Mike. Talk about bad luck.

As soon as the board came loose and begun to fall I realized what must be the end result. It was like everything began to move in slow motion. I saw everything so clearly; the board ripping free, the nail sticking out of the end of it, the trajectory of the board, Mike's position underneath it. It helicoptored down like a feather, or so it seemed to me, I tried to scream, but it was too late. Whack went the board directly into Mike's head exactly as I knew it must, and of course it had landed with the protruding nail sticking out facing his skull. The "thunk" noise it made when it hit was entirely the result of the board making contact, the nail had gone through silently, like a knife through hot butter. Immediately he screamed, and began to flail his arms about, turning in circles for no reason. He looked a little bit like a rooster down there only instead of a red fleshy mass he had a brown two by four for a comb. No matter how he turned and flailed the board did not come loose, or at least I never saw it come loose before I turned and fled. What I did see was blood, lots and lots and lots of blood, more blood than I had ever seen before and more than I have ever seen since. It was the blood more so than the board stuck to his or his screams and cries that put the fear of God in me and motivated me to run away as fast as I did. It was the blood that had convinced me my friend would surely die, and that I had killed him. It was too late for poor Mike, no one could help him, my only choice was to run and hide, and hope for something, anything, to save me.

Which brings me back full circle to a few paragraph's earlier before I got all sidetracked with that whipporwill thing, and then, in a clever bit of story telling went back in time to actually describe the events which resulted in me being in the closet in the first place. And then ended up back in that stupid closet again, which brings me to this paragraph where I have to remind the reader about all that and now here I have to pick up the story where I left it off previously, with me being awakened by my parents just as night began to fall. Does that make sense to you? I sure hope so because I gotta say I am a bit confused. In any event, my parents woke me up, and gently pulled me out of the closet. I was still groggy and I wiped my dirty, tear streaked face with my arms trying to remember what had happened. Slowly, it all came rushing back and I began to cry yet again, softly at first and then in a flood as I relayed the entire series of events to my parents. When I got to the part about all the blood I completely lost it. It was then that I remember both of my parents pulling me close and wrapping their arms around me in a big hug. My dad spoke first. "It's OK Dan, We know what happened. Mike is fine. Everything is OK." and then my mom, the concern evident in her voice as she spoke, "We were so worried about you. We couldn't find you." At first their words made no sense, how could it be possible "but how, all that blood?" My dad said simply "Head wounds always look a lot worse than they are. Just a lot of blood up there. It was only a slight puncture wound. A couple of stitches and he was good as new." It was one of the happiest moments of my life and even the fact that I got grounded for two weeks for the treehouse destruction couldn't dampen my fond memories of it. Mike and I never spoke of the incident. I moved away less than a year later and never saw or heard from him again after that. To this day I wonder if he remembers the events of that day. And if so, does he call me a coward for it? Yes, I was only a child, but still, it bothers me badly how I reacted and have never really forgiven myself.

Gheesh, that was a real downer of an ending for what was supposed to be a lighthearted tale of childhood misadventure. Usually, that is the way my writing goes. I never quite end up where I think I will, but I keep writing because no matter where it is, I always have a hell of a good time getting there.