One summer, when I was 10 or 11, my older brother and I “borrowed” our father’s golf cart from the cart shed at the country club1. It was my brother’s idea. I was just along for the ride. Or not, as it turned out. (My father was playing golf at the time. He played golf so much I thought that’s what he did for a living.)
I wanted to drive the cart so I kept trying to grab the steering wheel away from my brother. We fought, the cart swerved, — lookout! lookout! — my brother lost control and I went flying off the side, hit my head on the concrete in the parking lot and blacked out. I don’t remember anything after that. I’m sure I got in trouble, but I’m also pretty sure I milked it the whole way.
Aside from the dementia I will surely suffer as a result of this wholly avoidable accident and ensuing brain damage, it might also explain my overall quirkiness, which includes a fun talent for making shit up — book titles, colors, songs, character names — that I’m sure will come in handy later on when the dementia hits and my mind is cooked cabbage. (If cancer doesn’t get me first. What a fun future: dementia or cancer.)
As an example, these are book titles I wrote down on the notebook beside my bed. Tell me you wouldn’t be dying to read these:
Any Number Less Than One
Paltroi
Twilight’s Blessing of Carnage
Vuk Proleo: The March Backward for Hungary
Zan Coco Sayer: My Years as a Feather Girl
Don’t ask me what any of them mean. Have no idea, I just make them up.
I’m guessing they are trapped in that space that was damaged when I blacked out, and they seep into my consciousness periodically, in a pathetic attempt to escape the curcoil of my mind. Maybe. Curcoil, another word I just made up.
Also. Don’t even challenge me to a game of Balderdash because you’ll end up on the pavement. I mean it. Champeen.
1 Yeah, I spent my childhood as a country club brat. Until my father left us. With nothing. Thankfully, I had a resilient mother and some straight up kick-ass grandparents who together saw to it that we had fine childhood.
