I Wasn't Going to Write

It wasn't going to be that kind of trip. It was supposed to be more of a fact finding mission, not something that produced a bunch of blog material. Maybe more personal than that.

As it turns out there was one story that really needs to be written.

The year was 1963. I know this because they preempted cartoons for the Kennedy funeral and I was quite annoyed by it. People die all the time. Cartoons are too important to interrupt for a funeral...but I digress.

So the year was 1963. The location was Columbia Connecticut. The house was on a lake but I didn't remember that. I now believe it was on a lake because we drove by it and there was this lake. Odds are pretty good that the lake didn't form within the last 45 years so I now understand that to be the case.

All I really remember is a bunch of people, much bigger than I was, holding me down and sticking sharp objects into my wound. I remember struggling to make them stop. I remember failing. Everything else is stories. Well, not the scar, the scar is a constant reminder but the rest is stories told by someone else.

It started as many trips to the emergency room do, with two little boys playing by a lake. I always thought the other kid threw it and hit me but last week I learned there was a witness and things didn't unfold as I had imagined.

"I thought the other kid threw it" I said.

"No, that's not how it happened" my mother explained "I remember watching it and saying 'I think it's going to hit him, it could hit him right in the face'"

"It must have hit me pretty hard to leave a mark like this" I stated, pointing at the scar under my nose.

"Yes, it was a nasty gash" she replied.

"Are you sure the other kid didn't throw it? I really though he did."

My mother glanced over from the driver's side as we rolled past the house a second time following our turn around.

"I remember it like it was yesterday" she said "you definitely threw the boomerang yourself.