by Keith Robinson
One of my earliest memories of the community that surrounded my little microcosm of 60 Wells Road (Sherwood Drive back then) was of a man named Fred Drake. He owned the Sherwood Shoppe at the time and used to plow our driveway. When Fred would plow, being around one or two years old, I would stand up on the sofa facing the front window, using the back to steady myself to watch the snowplow. I watched the spinning orange light on the roof of his truck with great excitement and would point and say “Freh! Freh!”. Yes, hard to believe that this future child prodigy couldn’t pronounce a hard “d”, but time did pass.
My first in a series of good whacks to the head was not long after enjoying Fred’s light show/snow plowing. I fell into the corner of a bed frame and got my first permanent facial scar. My second bonk to the head was in 1975, when my mom and I were in a terrible accident on Route 8 in Hinsdale. There is a hard corner between Kittredge school and Wetherall’s garage where Mom played chicken with a dump truck. One could say she won, since she didn’t back down. One could say the dump truck won, because they didn’t back down. Regardless, I learned what a windshield tasted like at the ripe old age of three. My seatbelt at that time was my mom’s quick right arm. And to her credit, the damage would have been worse without her protection.
That makes two knocks to the noggin, what about the third one? There’s this little lake in Sherwood Forest named Lancelot. From as early as I can remember, that was where I went to the beach and played in the water. What I cannot remember is whether I learned to skate first or swim first on that lake. What I do remember is falling straight back heels up in the air and cracking the back of my brain bucket on a rigidly frozen Lancelot. Likely more than once, as I was a bit tenacious back in the day.
Now for the fourth and last little knock to the head. At the ripe old age of 12, a good friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) and I were constructing a fort. It wasn’t on my parents’ land. We were pioneers at that point and expanding into the untilled land to the south where the climate is warmer. Our desire to build, along with our ignorance of safety led to a large piece of timber being thrown from a second story of a structure on the site that landed directly onto this writer’s head. Since I am still alive and writing this, the damage wasn’t horrible. But I did see moths and butterflies for a moment, and when I put my hand on my head, it felt warm and wet – not good. At that point, I ran to the house and grabbed ice and a towel to compress the wound. Luckily, Mom and Dad were on the ambulance squad, which was certainly a stroke of good luck for this intrepid adventurer. Mom and Dad came home, saw the damage, and to their credit, calmly brought me to the emergency room. A split noggin was not the worst they had witnessed. Now to credit my long-winded Uncle Kurt: I am going to make a long story short. They stitched my head, gave my parents and me the usual protocol for wound care and off we went.
I thought I was done with head injuries at that point, but then I became a dad. When my son was 11 years old, he fell on his head after a simple shoving match at school. We were warned about a possible concussion and there was a very scary conversation about how to watch for possible long-term issues and how to avoid them. Luckily, my son’s multiple head whacks from then on were insulated by the use of the modern day bicycle helmet. I shudder to think what would have happened if he had continued to receive unprotected knocks to the noggin. Would he have ended up as a quirky writer, like his dad? Now he wears a helmet all the time in the form of a massive head of hair. Color me jealous. P.S. Wear a helmet.
