The list

Yesterday TBJ pitcher Happ got hit in the head with a line drive. My son and I watched the video and discussed it.

From the sports angle, the medical angle and the angle of tossing around ideas that could have helped him not catch a 100 mph baseball in the head.

"bet that hurts." he said.

"Oh yes it hurts. I got beaned in the temple once with a hard ball while running track in 5th grade."

I went on to tell him the story.

"You have been hurt a lot of ways" he commented.

and I couldn't really argue with that.

Here is the list.

1. Fell down stairs as a toddler, scar on forehead and concussion.
2. Hiding under parents bed and jerked my head up and put a 2" long hunk of wood under my scap.
3. Got bit by a horse on the first section of my pinky finger. (I can describe in detail to you how that pain went though my bones all the way up my arm.)
4. Fell down a cliff, yup cartwheeling the whole way.
5. Trashed the ligaments in my left foot in a slip on the wet kitchen floor
6. Beaned in the temple with a hard ball. (MZ was pretty impressed his hit went all the way to the track and hit me)
7. Fallen off of multiple horses.
8. Had a toe broken by a horse standing on me.
9. Crushed myself in my own car and broke both collar bones and a 4 ribs.
10. Got punched in the face by a demented resident - THE DAY I  had gotten my teeth pulled and dentures placed.
11. Back was trashed in an OJI when a resident tried to kill me.
12. been inside a car that backed over a downed very LIVE power line.
13. Been ejected from a raft in class 3 rapids
14. gotten my pelvis messed up when a pony reared up and flipped over on me.
15 Been in a T-bone car accident and received an injured elbow.
16. numerous spectacular roller skating falls.
17. Got separated from my parties in the lava bed caves and fell in a crevasse, the  A'a lava  just chewing my leg up for lunch.
18. there some other stuff, but I have to wait for some statues of limitations to run out...

(I am not ever going to include the overwhelming massive amount of self inflicted 3rd degree burns, I have done to my self over the years.)

Looking over my list It looks like I have lived a life of danger and should probably have my own stunt man.

I just think I have lived a writer's life.

Had I lived a safe, stay on the path life I don't think I could write like I do.

I walk with a limp nowadays.

When I was a young child I used to walk with a limp too. A full on fake-out-vying-for-an-Oscar limp. When people would ask me what happened I would give them details of a horrific horse related accident. I loved the attention and the mysterious air it gave me.

The karmatic humor is not lost on me, when I am asked nowadays why I limp, and  have to give details of the horse related accident. "I broke the first rule of riding. Sky, you, horse, ground...keep them in that order."