Head

Woke up early and it’s still dark outside. I can hear the morning songs of the birds outside my window. “I hate those fucking birds!” said Linnell, a guy I worked with at FedEx. I’m beginning to agree with him. 

I think I was regarded as “The Drunk,” at FedEx. I wasn’t fooling anybody. Once I had a seizure and smashed my face on a wooden crate. Half my face became a huge black bruise. My right eyeball was dark purple. I was a sight! I looked like a fighter after a savage pummeling. I was a frightening mess but I went to work anyway. A couple people asked about my face, “Jesus, are you all right?” “Whoa, dude! What the fuck happened to you?”

      

People joked, “You should see the other guy!”

      

I made up a stupid story about tripping and falling. It was an awful, transparent excuse. My powers of creative writing failed me. I’m sure no one believed me. I might as well have used the old, “Hit my head on the bathroom door...”
       I didn't want to admit to a seizure. It would expose too much.

     But most of my coworkers chose to ignore my raging battle wounds. It was almost comical how they nervously averted their eyes. They spoke to me staring at the floor.

     I never had myself checked out, medically. I wonder if I incurred any lasting damage. Whenever I forget something, I consider the damage I sustained. How much did I lose? How many memories did I dribble away?

     But as bad as the damage was, it paled in comparison to the head wound I suffered in New Hampshire around ten years ago. I fell straight back and SMASHED the back of my head open on a big rough slab of granite. Too drunk to go to the hospital, my friend patched me together using napkins and a stereo wire. He told me I had a hole in my head. Did I mention I was drunk? Anyway, he got me home safely where I continued to drink and eventually passed out. In the morning I got a phone call from my savior. I assured him I was fine while staring at my blood-soaked pillow. "No worries."

     Again, when my thinking becomes sluggish, when I fumble through my memory, when I can’t place a name or a location, I wonder how much is due to old age and how much to the deep lacerating scars under my cranium.
     How much of ME did I bleed away?