The weather here is gross again – thunderstorms, hail, tornado warnings, the works – and it reminded me of a story.

I used to love thunderstorms – I liked to watch the lightning.
When I was a freshman in college and still living at home, a bad thunderstorm came through one night. I was sleeping soundly through it, when lightning struck very close by, and the force was such that it actually shook the house (and yes it is a HOUSE with a foundation, not a trailer or pre-fab home).

I will step back here and mention that I was a big nerd in high school, involved in a lot of different stuff, and had all the trophies and plaques to show for it. Some of the plaques were above my wall. Above my bed. Specifically, above my headboard.

Okay, so when the lightning struck, the thunder shook the house so hard that the plaque knocked the heads off the tacks it was hanging on, and the heavy, wooden, gold-plated plaque fell, corner first, onto my head.
Surprisingly, this did not fully wake me up – I rubbed the sore spot, and rolled over and went back to sleep (or maybe it knocked me unconscious, who knows – it would not have been my first concussion).
I woke myself up a short time later when, when I had turned over and thrown my arm across my pillow, I noticed it was wet. And my head was wet. I went to the bathroom, saw my head covered in blood, and started screaming.
My mom was the only other one home at the time, and she came running in to see what the racket was. I was screaming, “I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding!”, and she tried to see what was going on, but realized she couldn’t see shit without her glasses, so she spent 10 minutes looking for them all over the house while I was freaking the hell out.
Finally, we figured out that the wound was very small, but head wounds bleed like crazy, so I just cleaned it up as best I could, took some Advil, and went back to bed.
It is extremely difficult to let such a wound scab over and heal when it is well into your hairline, and it is summer in south Texas, which means that your hair must be in a ponytail at all times, and your head will be sweaty and gross and necessitate that you wash your hair every day.

The morals of the story are:
1. Don’t hang anything heavy on the wall above your head, or it could fall on you in the middle of the night and you could die, or at least suffer a head injury.
2. If you are one of those people who gets annoyed when scaredy cat-types jump with each thunderclap, don’t sit next to me. Sorry.