I've been working on a blog about liter-a-toure for a while, but it's not coming together, so I decided to write instead about violence. I actually have a semi-good reason, which is all I ever need to write about something. I've had headaches my entire adult life. Sometimes they're just headaches, sometimes they go on for days, and sometimes they slip into migraines and I end up in a dark room, shivering. I'm a big believer in the mind-body connection, and I know the headaches are usually induced by stress, but that's not what I'm thinking about today.
I had a CAT scan a few years ago when I started getting headaches every time I bent over. It turned out to be a combination of a small bleed in my brain and allergies, but in the discovery process the doctor asked if I had suffered a lot of head injuries in my life. I laughed (I always laugh at weird shit), because, yes, I have. But, for some reason, I started thinking about just how many head injuries I've had in my life and then I started to get freaked out. I'm like the civilian Ali. So, I decided to list them, from concussions to just run-of-the-mill head-as-club injuries. Because, first of all, I actually like to create lists. Secondly, I'm always interested in writing about the things I think I forgot, but it turns out I totally remember. I have no idea why I keep using italics. I think it's because I just re-discovered the control-I thing.
So, here goes, in no specific order except a loose time-line, because, well, why the hell not?
1. I was in my walker when I was an infant. The old fashioned kind with wheels that actually went somewhere. Someone left the basement door open. I think we can all see where this is going. My mother found me at the bottom of the stairs, in convulsions, my eyes rolled back in my head.
“Is this your first child?” the doctor asked disdainfully when my mother brought me in to be checked.
“No,” my mother answered. “Fifth.”
“You should know better,” he said. I don’t think people had a lot of respect for concussions in the late 70s.
2. My father shoved me down the stairs when I was three or four. We lived in a split level, and he shoved me from the top, causing me to tumble, tumble, tumble until the front door stopped me.
3. My sister put me on the handlebars of her bike when I was four. No one could have known that the brake line would go out. No one could have known that stopping yourself with the garage door with your baby sister perched on the handlebars was a bad idea.
4. All I’ll say is clean sliding glass doors are really hard to see when you’re running and your expectation is that when you’re running that fast no doors will stop you. Because they will.
5. Body, meet two wheeler bike. Bike, meet gang of evil eleven year old Schwinn biker boys. Face, meet ground. Boys, meet my very angry father. He’s a prescription drug addict with a rage problem. Good luck.
6. I was fifteen and my older brother was out of town. My older brother had gotten a car for his birthday. It was a stick, and I couldn’t drive a stick, but since I had no driver’s license anyway I didn’t think this should stop me. We stole my brother’s car, me, my best friend and two other girls, and we drove to Rock Island. Driving a stick is not so bad. As long as you stay on the highway and avoid even the slightest hill, it’s really quite easy. But Rock Island, an hour away from Iowa City, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi river, is a hilly kind of town.
We stopped at a gas station and a truck full of young men pulled up (literally, a pickup truck full. There had to be like fifteen of them). We commenced doing what young people do, but we quickly decided this truck-o-boys was not that great. So, we took off up the long hill, me carefully attempting to get all the way up to third gear without stalling the car and rolling alllll the way back down. Suddenly, the truck pulled up and veered in front of us, forcing me to slam on the brakes. But I forgot to hit the clutch, so the car shuddered to a stop there in the right hand lane.
A few of the young men jumped out of the back of the truck and came to my car window, which was already rolled down. One of them stood right outside my window. I remember he had on jeans and a black vest with no shirt. Which should have put me on my guard, but I was young and not the brightest bulb.
"Are you that desperate, you have to run women down?" I asked him. I don't know if he smiled or not-- I couldn't really see his face until he took a step back.
He started talking, and I still remember his monologue-- he said, "You all are going to visit Alex? Is that what you're doing? Well, he's a punk. And he would never do this--" and he raised his arm, and I saw, as his body twisted, that there was a black gun tucked into the waist of his jeans. He punched me in the side of my face, and I remember falling toward my friend's lap. I passed out and woke up thirty seconds later, fighting to sit up, not knowing who had their arms over my head. I woke up fast enough to sit up and see the truck pulling off in front of us.
A few days later another friend who had been in the car saw an article in the Quad Cities newspaper-- that same man had gone on to do a drive by shooting that night or the next day. He missed his target, but he killed a child on the sidewalk and wounded one other.
7. Head, meet crazy boyfriend that will take months to escape. Head, meet steering wheel the first time you try to escape him. Head, meet steering wheel a few more times. Drive, dammit. Just drive.
Escape attempt #2: A while later he held me hostage in my apartment with a bat, occasionally tapping me on the head with it.
#3: run to the bathroom to try to escape. He is a surprisingly fast crazy man. Escape fail.
8. I played catcher in softball and had a tendency to flip my helmet off a little too fast. It's no one's fault that my head met the bat a couple times. The batter was just trying to get on first.
9. Boyfriend #2. He didn't seem that crazy. But I guess I pissed him off. He dragged me down the stairs and ran my head into a wall. But it was just that one time.
10. Same boyfriend. Different time. We were at a bar and suddenly a huge fight of the chair throwing, punch wailing type got started. It continued outside, in a parking lot up from the bar, but it became clear that it was no longer a bar fight and was, instead, a bunch of men beating the crap out of one guy who was on the ground, pressed up against the fence that separated this parking lot from that parking lot. I knew (although I don't remember how I knew) that I knew the body pressed up against that fence. In fact, that body belonged to crazy boyfriend #1 (from whom I'd long since escaped thanks to a handy warrant he had to serve time on). I ran forward and began grabbing the men's arms who were beating him up. I just didn't feel that it was fair, that's all. To give the men credit, I don't think they realized I was a woman. It was dark, and late, and they were full of fire. When they did, they totally stopped punching me.
I feel like there's more, but I've run out of steam. I took a couple taps to the head when I kick boxed. It's important to me to be physically capable of violence, if necessary. I have not used that skill in many years, and I have no intention of using it (what do you mean you don't like my story? HA! TAKE THAT! AND THAT!) But if I'm ever walking to my car late at night, it won't just be the keys that the criminal gets. I remember a friend saying to me years ago that she'd never been in a fight, that she was terrified that she would ever have to fight.
"The first thing you have to know to be a successful fighter," I told her, "is how to take a hit. The most surprising thing-- the thing that still surprises me, is that getting hit doesn't hurt that bad. Once you know that, it's all gravy. Just let somebody hit you and try not to be afraid."
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